Wednesday 5 May 2010

Em7 / G6

Two guitar chords for the price of one! Today's guitar chord is Em7, this has exactly the same notes in as G6. The Em7 chord has its root note on the B string of the guitar:
E minor 7 Guitar Chord
Eminor 7 - G6 guitar chord

This guitar chord can be created by modifying some of the 4 string Dominant 7th Guitar Chords we looked at in previous posts.

To create a minor7 chord from a Dominant 7th chord, lower the 3rd of the chord one fret. Comparing the minor 7 chord above with this Dominant 7th inversion you can see we've changed only one note.

As this guitar chord can also be thought of as a Major 6th chord, we can also easily change 7th chords into a 6th chord by lowering the 7th one fret. Compare the above inversion with this G7 guitar chord and you can see that again only note has changed.

Minor 7 chords use these scale degrees: 1, b3, 5, b7
E minor 7 uses the notes: E, G, B D
Minor7 chords can be played in place of most minor chords and as chords ii, ii and vi in major keys

Major 6 chords use the scale degrees: 1, 3, 5, 6
G6 uses the notes: G, B, D, E
Major 6 chords can be played in place of almost all major chords and as chords I, IV and V in major keys.

As you can see the notes of G6 and Em7 are the same, this means we're learning two guitar chords for the price of one. There are lots of guitar chords like this that can be used in multiple situations. In future posts we'll look at these chord synonyms in much more detail.

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