7th Chord Inversions are.... fun?

Verne Bunsen

Hero Member
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Hello all,

So I've committed myself recently to the study of 7th chord inversions, in hopes of adding some sauce to my rhythm playing. I've been feeling a bit... stale in that regard. It's a big bite, but I'm really enjoying it and digging some of the new sounds it's opening up. I'm a "charts and spreadsheets" kind of guy, so as part of getting my head around things I put together these chord charts that I think have turned into a pretty handy tool (aka: cheat sheet...). I thought I'd share them here for anyone interested.

There are three sheets, based on the chord voicings rooted on the 6th, 5th and 4th strings respectively. For each, the root position (root in the bass), 1st inversion (3rd in the bass), 2nd inversion (5th in the bass) and 3rd inversion (7th in the bass) are shown for Major 7, Dominant 7, Minor 7, Minor7b5 and Diminished 7 chords. Location of the root, 3rd, 5th and 7th is indicated for each voicing, which helps me to keep track of how things are moving around. The distance in steps that the bass note must move to get from one position to the next is also indicated. The chords are presented in the standard way, with the low E on the left and the high E on the right, fingering indicated with "1" for index through "4" for pinky.

I had to save them as PDFs to attach them here, but if anyone would like the Excel files I'll be happy to share them. Enjoy!

(edit: column header for the 5th string/3rd Inversion was not displaying correctly. Fixed it and re-uploaded...)

(another edit: fingering for root position minor7 on 5th string called for the pinky to do impossible things. Just a typo, replaced with middle finger and updated embedded image and attachment, all is well, carry on.....)
Inversions%206th.pdf
Inversions%205th.pdf
Inversions%204th.pdf
 

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Downloaded. Thanks.
Good to brush up on this. It's been a long time for me since I had a look at these.
 
Had to look at the charts to figure out what you were talking about, but now I gotcha... thanks for putting these together.

One thing - what's 'bb7' in a dim7 chord?  ???
 
TenThumbs said:
One thing - what's 'bb7' in a dim7 chord?  ???

bb7 is a double-flat 7; the 7 is flatted a full step from where you would find it in the major scale. Enharmonically the same as a 6, but not referred to as such in this context... If you look at the relationship between the minor7b5 (b3/b5/b7) and the diminished 7 (b3/b5/bb7), the only thing that changes is the 7 is flatted another half step.
 
Very nice presentation of a pretty complex topic. And double thumbs up for the work involved in getting the charts so nice to read. Thanks!!
 
Thanks for the compliment! It went through several iterations until even I could interpret it  :toothy12:  Glad to know it’s helpful to others!
 
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