How to Play Minor 7th Chords on Guitar

Learning how to play and construct minor 7^th chords on guitar is a great way to expand your repertoire and add richness to your playing.

And like most chords they aren’t as daunting as they sound.

The only?difficulty in playing these chords, if any, comes from having something new to learn ? but once you have practiced them enough they will feel as natural and familiar as any other chord.

What is a minor 7^thchord?

A minor seventh is a minor chord with a minor 7^th note added to?it.

So for example, a D Minor chord has the notes D, F & A.

D minor 7 (written as Dm7) adds in a minor 7^th note ? which is a C. So Dm7 contains the D, F, A & C notes.

So a minor 7^th chord is made up of:

Root
Minor 3^rd
Perfect 5^th
Minor 7^th

In the case of our Dm7

D (Root)
F (Minor 3^rd)
A (Perfect 5^th)
C (Minor 7^th)

Don?t worry if you don?t understand this fully. If these terms are new to you it might take a little bit of understanding. Once you play around with it a bit on the guitar it will become clearer.

And, even though I find it is useful to know, you don?t necessarily need to understand the theory to play the chords.

Minor 7^th Open Chords

Below are a few different minor 7^ths as open chords. I have only shown those that are easy to play as open chords. For all other chords see the barre chords below.

Em7

There are a couple of options for the Em7. One uses the normal open Em and adds the minor 7^th (D) on the B string (3^rd fret) – see above. The other just uses one finger to play the chord. This is achieved by simply lifting off the 2nd finger when playing the Em – see below.

Am7

Dm7

Bm7

Minor 7^th chords with root note on D string

Take the pattern of the Dm7 shown above, except now play it using your 2^nd third and 4^th fingers.

Then slide everything up one fret.

Now add your first finger onto the D string in the 1^st fret. Strum or finger pick only the first 4 strings (i.e. don?t play the 5^th (A) or 6^th (Low E) strings.

You?ve now played a D#m7.

Move everything up one fret and you now have an Em7 (in a different position to the open Em7).

The Fm7 using this pattern is shown in the chord chart below.

Minor 7^th with root note on A string

Now we move into constructing minor 7^th chords using barre chords.

Like the m7?s on the D string (and with all other barre chords) only one pattern is needed and is then the same pattern can be repeated up the fret board to change the chord.

This one is pretty easy assuming you?ve learned your minor barre chords. Simply set up for your minor barre chord and lift off your 4^th finger. Voila! You now have your m7 barre chord pattern for 5^th?string (A string) barre chords.

You will notice (as is always the case with barre chords on the A string) that the pattern being played by your 2^nd and 3^rd fingers is the same as the open Am7.

The example chord below is a Cm7.

Minor 7^th with root note on E string

As is the beauty of barre chords the pattern for the barre minor 7^th chords on the E (6^th) string is the same shape as the open Em7.

Now there were two options for the open Em7 above. You can play it with the first pattern but you may find this quite difficult though it is certainly doable. The easier way is to play this is by using the 2^nd?Em7 pattern above.

The easiest way to think of it is to setup for your minor barre chord and then simply lift off your 4^th finger and you have a minor 7^th barre chord.

The example chord below is a Gm7.

Over To You

This may feel a little bit above your head at first but once you practice these for a while they will become like second nature just like the rest of the chords that you have learned.

If you haven’t yet learned your major and minor chords and dominant 7^th chords I encourage you to learn these first before trying minor sevenths. It will be less confusing if you already have a grasp of chords.

Thanks for reading and I hope you have learned a lot from this post. To get a better understanding of this stuff I encourage you to take lessons ? be they online lessons or in-person lessons.

To decide on which lessons you prefer check out my post on online vs in-person guitar lessons

Feel free to leave any comments or questions in the comments section below. I try to respond to every comment.

How to Play Minor 7th Chords on Guitar