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Courses/Stage 1

Your First Chord: Em

Elementary6 minWith just two easy chords

Em uses only two fingers, making it the easiest chord to start with — your first real chord.

Video lessons are in production — follow the notes and practice checklist below and you'll learn it just fine.
Stage 1 · Play Your First Song5 lessons

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Show all 5 lessons
  1. Your First Chord: Em6 min
  2. Your Second Chord: Am7 min
  3. Chord Change: Em ↔ Am8 min
  4. Add a Strum: Your First Accompaniment8 min
  5. Full Practice: Play Your First Passage9 min

How to fret Em

Press the 5th string, 2nd fret with your middle finger and the 4th string, 2nd fret with your ring finger; play all the other strings open. That's it — all 6 strings should ring.

Once it's fretted, pluck from the 6th string to the 1st string one by one, checking that each is clear with no muting or buzz.

✓Tip up · one string✗Pad flat · mutes next
How: stand the tip up
Target fret← Headstock✓ Just behind the fretClean and easiest✗ Mid-space → buzz
Where: hug the fret
  1. 1.Press with the very tip of the finger, standing it up straight — not the soft flat pad. A flattened pad touches and mutes the neighbouring string.
  2. 2.Press just behind the fret you want to sound, right up against it — not in the middle of the two frets (causes buzz), and never on top of the fret (mutes it).
  3. 3.Trim the left-hand nails until no white edge shows, so the fingertip can stand up and press all the way down — otherwise the string sits high and goes thin or buzzes.
  4. 4.The thumb presses the centre of the back of the neck, pinching against the fingers for leverage; use only "just enough to sound", then pluck each string to check.

The key to making it ring: stand the fingertip up and press straight down (don't lay the pad flat — it'll mute the neighboring string), with the contact point just behind the fret wire. Em is also basic training for fretting any chord cleanly.

  • 💡 Stand your fingers up and press with the fingertips, without touching the neighboring strings.
  • 💡 There's a dumb-but-effective drill in my course: from the bass strings to the treble strings, “press one, play one,” keeping each pressed finger down without lifting it — don't wait until the whole chord is fretted to start plucking. That way each finger's landing gets checked by your ear on its own.

⚠️ Common mistakes

  • Fingers too flat, pressing with the pad and touching an adjacent open string, which mutes it — stand up and use the fingertip.
  • Fretting too far from the fret wire, which takes a lot of force and buzzes easily — press close to the fret wire.

Chords in this lesson

Tap the 🔊 under each diagram to match every chord's sound to its shape.

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Go play these

Songs that fit this lesson's technique and chords — pick one and practice in the library:

Practice checklist

  • Hold Em and pluck string by string, making sure all 6 are clean.
  • Release and re-fret Em, repeating 10 times to build the fingers' “muscle memory.”