The following lesson is intended to be used as a companion piece to the previous Major Chord Inversions article. Be sure you have familiarized yourself with the first lesson before proceeding.

The guitarist's quest to know the entire fretboard intimately is an ongoing challenge. It is important to be comfortable improvising, reading music, and playing chords everywhere on the neck of the guitar. In a previous lesson on Major Chord Inversions, we learned 12 ways to play a major chord on the fretboard. This same concept can be applied to minor chords, which will again open up a whole variety of possibilities on the fretboard.

Why Learn So Many Ways to Play a Minor Chord?

You probably already know a few different ways to play most minor chords, right? So, why bother to learn more?
The first, and most obvious answer is learning these new voicings will allow you to begin "voice leading" (the process of each note of a chord moving smoothly and minimally to the next chord). Once you've begun to really learn the sound of voice leading, you'll find it starting to creep into your guitar solos too.
The following minor chord inversions have other uses in improvising too. Many guitarists (like Santana, David Gilmour, and others) often play arpeggios in their solos. Arpeggios are simply the notes in a chord played one at a time, instead of all together. So, for example, over an Aminor chord, Carlos Santana might play an arpeggio of one of the 12 Aminor chord shapes we are about to learn.

Ready to start learning? Let's move on to playing minor chord inversions