The D minor guitar chord is often referred to as the saddest sounding chord on guitar, and it also has dark and haunting qualities to its sound. D minor is made up of three different notes – D is the root note, A is the perfect 5th, and F is the minor 3rd.
First you will learn the open D minor chord, here is the chord diagram for this:
Following this open chord, we next take a look at the Dm barre chord that begins at the 5th fret of the A string (a D note). When playing this chord, be sure not to play the low E string because we want the lowest sounding note to be the root, which is D of course! Here is the D minor barre chord diagram:
Next up is the full D minor barre chord with an E string root note of D, which begins at the 10th fret of the low E string. The challenge here is to barre down on the G, B and high e strings using the index finger, and to hear all the notes clearly with no buzz sounds or muted notes. This is always the greatest challenge for beginner guitar players when holding down minor barre chords. Here is the chord diagram for the Dm barre chord with an E string root:
The nice thing about these chord shapes is that partial chords can be played along the G B and e strings, with an open D string to give some cool sounding D minor chord shapes as shown in this guitar lesson video.