Easy Minor 7 chords

An old friend of mine by the name of Jamie Graeme showed me something really cool quite a few years ago and it's been a big part of my playing ever since. Jamie went to GIT, and when he came back one of the things he showed me was a real easy way to play 7th chords built using (in this order) just the root, 7th and 3rd notes of the chord—the 5th degree is left out, although I'll show you a variation that brings the 5th back too. You can use this concept for chord types such as minor 7, dominant 7, major 7 and minor ma7 chords. For this post I'll look at the minor 7 because it's probably the easiest to play and it's perhaps a little more common across a range of styles. Here's the form with the root note on the 6th string:


With the root note on the 5th string:


And with the root note on the 4th string:


These chords are great for working with written chord progressions where the notes haven't been specified or for accompanying other musicians. They work with a wide range of styles, usually leave a few fingers free to add in other notes if you need to, and basically are a handy thing to have in your bag of tricks.

You can also include the 5th note on top as the following 2 fretboard diagrams show:

Reciprocal notes

If you take any note it can be paired with another note to 'add up' to an octave.

For example if you play a G note, then a fifth above that is D and a fourth above that is G again.

Here are the pairs:

b2   7
 2  b7
b3   6
 3  b6
 4   5
b5  b5
 5   4
b6   3
 6  b3
b7   2
 7  b2

In fact you only need to learn this up to the flat 5, because above that it's the same pairs of notes—the notes are just switched.

It's also interesting that there is a symmetry to the pattern, which may help you to remember it more easily.

The Circle of Fifths 4

So what happens with the key of F# or Gb then? These key signatures are a special case because they are written with 6 sharps or flats, but there are only 5 sharps or flats available. There are some very good related reasons why this happens:

1. Firstly in written music each letter is used exactly once in a key signature—the thing that varies is whether a note is natural, sharp or flat.


2. So, in the F# key signature the leading tone (i.e. maj7) of F# is F, but we use E# instead of F to avoid having both F# and F natural notes present which would make the written notation more confusing than it needs to be.


3. Likewise in the key of Gb we avoid having to name the 3rd and 4th degrees as Bb and B by using Cb instead of B.

This is how they look on the staff, F# first:

And the Gb key signature:

The Circle of Fifths 3

To use the circle of fifths to show how the flat key signatures relate to one another, you need to move one step around backwards around the circle from C to F, the relationship between these two as modes of C major is this:
C: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
F: 1 2 3 #4 5 6 7
So the difference between Ionian mode and Lydian mode is one note: the fourth which is a perfect 4 in Ionian and a sharp 4 in Lydian. If we decide to play in the key of C there are no sharps or flats, and in the key of F there is one flat which is produced by taking the sharp 4 of F Lydian (a B natural note) and lowering it a semitone to become the perfect 4 of F Ionian which is a Bb note.

The key signature for F major has one flat and that is indicated on the B bar of the staff (image to come) to show that the key of F major has one flat (Bb) and all the other notes are natural. This works the same way as the keys progress around the circle of fifths: each successive key signature adds a flat note as the perfect 4 note of the new key. So going another step backwards around from F to Bb adds the Eb note to the key signature—we keep the Bb from the previous key (obviously because it becomes the tonic in the new key). The further back around you proceed in steps of a fourth, the more flats get added:

C: no sharp
F: 1 flat  (Bb)
Bb: 2 flats (Bb - Eb)
Eb: 3 flats (Bb - Eb - Ab)
Ab: 4 flats (Bb - Eb - Ab - Db)
Db: 5 flats (Bb - Eb - Ab - Db - Gb)

You'll note that the flats shown above in the order they appear on the staff in a key signature are all mapped out in the same order in the circle of fifths (image to come).

So what happens with the key of Gb? Well that is a special case which I'll cover in another post.

The Circle of Fifths 2

One of the many interesting things about the circle of fifths is that it can be used to show how all the key signatures relate to one another. If you move one step around the circle from C to G, the relationship between these two as modes of C major, the Ionian mode (with a root of C in C major) and the Mixolydian mode (with a root of G in C major) is this:
C: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
G: 1 2 3 4 5 6 b7
Looking at just the intervals in these two modes the difference is one note: the seventh which is a major 7 in the Ionian mode and a flat 7 in the Mixolydian mode. If we decide to play in the key of C major there are no sharps or flats, and in the key of G major there is one sharp which is produced by taking the flat 7 of G Mixolydian (an F natural note) and raising it a semitone to become the natural 7 of G major (Ionian) which is a F# note.

The key signature for G major has one sharp and that is indicated on the F bar of the staff (image to come) to show that the key of G major has one sharp (F#) and all the other notes are natural. This works the same way as the keys progress around the circle of fifths: each successive key signature adds a sharp note as the major 7 note of the new key. So going another step around from G to D adds the C# note to the key signature—we keep the F# from the previous key because it becomes the major 3rd note in the new key. The further around we go in steps of a fifth, the more sharps get added:

C: no sharp
G: 1 sharp  (F#)
D: 2 sharps (F# - C#)
A: 3 sharps (F# - C# - G#)
E: 4 sharps (F# - C# - G# - D#)
B: 5 sharps (F# - C# - G# - D# - A#)

You'll note that the sharps shown above in the order they appear on the staff in a key signature are all mapped out in the same order in the circle of fifths (image to come).

So what happens with the key of F#? Well that is a special case which I'll cover in another post. But for the very next post I'll show how the above process works to produce the key signatures that contain flats by going the other way around the circle in fourth intervals.