How To Play A Cm Chord on Acoustic Guitar
The Cm chord comes up fairly frequently in songs, but probably not as frequently as F#m and Bm. But the great thing about barre chords and barre chord shapes it that if you learn one chord, you learn them all.
Let’s start with the 5 string version of the Cm barre chord below.
Return to All Guitar Lessons5 String Cm Chord on Guitar
The great thing about this barre chord is that if you have learned a Bm chord, then playing the Cm chord will be easy.
The barre occurs at the 3rd fret and you can see that your other 3 fingers are in an ‘Am’ shape. So all you would have to do is slide your Bm chord up one fret and tada! You have a Cm chord.
Easy right?
Like the Bm chord, most of my students don’t have trouble getting the Cm chord to sound good because of the smaller barre. It’s the 6 string version below that gives students a bit more trouble.
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6 String Cm Chord on Guitar
As you can see from the diagram, this Cm chord requires you to barre four strings with only 1 finger. Ouch!
Often times, students will have trouble getting the bottom two strings (B and e) to ring through but no problem with the top 4 strings.
This issue is caused by not having enough pressure on the bottom part of the barre. It will come with time, so keep practicing and focus on squeezing the bottom of that finger. Remember, your first finger acts like a capo.
