Mastering 7th Guitar Chords - Advanced.

This page shows you how to play 12 different inversions of 7th chords, min7th chords, major 7th chords and more.

But why do I need to know 12 different ways to play the same chord?
Knowing how to play the same chord in many different ways increases your musicality, enables better voice leading, allows you to play chord melodies and opens up more creative possibilities. These 7th chords can be used in blues, jazz, pop, country and more.

Each of the inversions takes the 4 notes of a 7th chord and plays them across four adjacent strings.

Each of these examples uses a G7 chord but of course you can transpose this to any other key, simply pay attention to the position of the root note (here marked with a square on the chord box diagram).

The next inversion has a root note on the guitar's D string:
This inversion has its' root note on the guitar's B string:
Here is the final inversion played on the top 4 strings:
Moving onto the next 4 strings we have another 4 inversions of our 7th chord:

Here are the individual chord boxes for each of the inversions of our G7 chord on the A, D, G and B strings of the guitar:
The next inversion has a root note on the B string:

This root position 7th chord is widely used:
The final inversion of our 7th chord on the middle four guitar strings:
Finally we have the four inversions of our G7 chord on the bottom 4 strings. Out of all of the voicings these are probably the least useful and least commonly used but are still helpful to know:

Here are the individual chord diagrams for each of these inversions, starting with a fragment of a common G7 barre chord at the 3rd fret:
This inversion involves a small stretch and has the root note on the D string:
The next inversion has an A string root:
Finally this inversion has a G string root.
Playing through all 12 inversions looks like this:

If you have to vamp on a chord (e.g. in funk music) for a long time changing between these inversions adds musical interest and can help to build tension. Most of the time however you'll be changing between chords so it's a good idea to practice this. For example playing through a blues chord sequence (CLICK THE IMAGE TO ENLARGE):

There are many different ways to play through this so experiment with your own ways too.
Changing just one note of these inversions allows us to change all of these 7th chords to minor 7th chords by lowering the 3rd of the chord one fret.

Minor 7th chords use the 1, b3, 5, b7 degrees of the major scale.
Gm7 uses these notes: G, Bb, D and F

So we now have 12 different ways to play Gminor7:

Lowering the 5th of our m7 chord gives us Gm7b5, also known as G half-diminished:
m7b5 chords use the 1, b3, b5, b7 degrees of the major scale.
Gm7b5 uses these notes: G, Bb, Db and F

If we take our dominant 7th chord and raise the 7th one fret, we have a major 7th chord.
Major 7th chords use the 1, 3, 5 and 7 degrees of the major scale.
Gmaj7 uses these notes: G, B, D and F#

We can now play 12 different inversions of all:

• Dominant 7th chords
• Minor7 chords
• Major7 chords
• Minor7b5 chords

Practice playing through some songs using these inversions in one position looking for the inversion that has the smoothest voice-leading, the smallest jump from one chord to the next. Then try a different position.

You can also create a host of other chords from the dominant 7th guitar chords:

• Lower the b7 one fret to create 6th chord
• Raise the root one fret to create a diminished chord
• Raise the 5th to create a 7#5 chord etc

Substitutions and Synonyms
Some of these chords have synonyms, chords that function in different ways. For example, Gm7b5 uses these notes : G, Bb, Db, F. This chord with exactly the same fingering can also function as a 9th chord, a minor6 chord and a 7#5b9 chord:

• Gm7b5 =  G, Bb, Db, F
• Eb9 = (Eb) G, Bb, Db, F
• A7#5b9 = (A),  C#(Db), E# (F), G, Bb
• Bbm6 = Bb, Db, F, G

So if you want to play an Eb9 chord, it's exactly the same fingering in the same position as an Eb9 chord. Using all our previous inversions of the m7b5 chord we now have 12 different ways to play 9th chord, 7#5b9 chords and minor 6th chords.

Minor7th Substitutions
Gminor 7 uses the notes G, Bb, D and F. We can also think of this as:

• Ebmaj9: (Eb), G, Bb, D, F
• Bb6: Bb, D, F, G

Major 7th substitutions
Gmajor 7 uses the notes G, B, D and F#. We can also think of this as:

• Emin9: (E) G, B, D and F#

By using and modifying our dominant 7th chords in any key we can play:

• 12 dominant 7th guitar chords 
• 12 minor 7th guitar chords
• 12 major 7th guitar chords
• 12 m7b5 guitar chords
• 12 dominant 9th chords
• 12 7#5b9 guitar chords
• 12 major 6th guitar chords
• 12 minor 6th guitar chords
• 12 major 9th guitar chords
• 12 minor 9th guitar chords

That's a lot of chords from our 12 basic dominant 7th guitar chord shapes! Try playing through II V I progressions in every major and minor key and your favourite songs to get to grips with these chords and tune back soon for more Guitar Chord tips.