Minor Chords and Inversions

Following on from the earlier posts on major chords: the minor triad is made up of the root, flat 3rd and perfect 5th. 1 b3 5.

Like the major chord we could play these notes as a simple barre chord. Here’s Am.

A minor barre

As with the major barre chord, several notes are repeated which tends to be avoided in jazz playing, so here’s an A minor chord with the root note on the 6th string.

A minor triad

As is typical, the A string is muted and no note is played there. Instead, we stretch back a couple of frets to play the 5th on the D string instead. This may look a little awkward but it makes more sense as a swing voicing [see below]. As well as putting the root on the low E string, we can also play the standard inversions with the b3 on the bottom.

A minor (b3 on bottom)

Note that the root note is on the D string, so we can work out which fret to play this inversion by locating the root on D. Finally, we can play the 5th on the low E string, the root note would be on the 5th string. It’s not played, but you can remember which fret to play at by aiming at the fret where the A would fall on the 5th string.

”]Again, this is a fairly ‘stretchy’ chord voicing. The extra semi-tone shift from the 3rd to the flat-3rd makes most of these voicings a little more ‘open’ in terms of fingering, but this tends to be less noticeable with swing voicings, minor 6ths or minor 7ths. Note: Minor 6ths and 7ths will be the subject of the next post.

As with the major and major 7th chords, in swing music it’d be typical to omit the B string, so all of the chord voicings are made up of three notes on the E, D and G strings. Here are the swing versions of the above chords. First with the root on the bottom string:

Am swing

Then with the b3:

Am swing (b3 on bass)

And finally the 5th:

Am swing (5 on bass)

For me, personally, I’m less proficient with minor chord inversions, they fall less naturally under the fingers than the major inversions, so tend to stick to just the versions with the root on the bass and the 5th on the bass. Something I need to work on for the next video post, possibly.

Next time: minor 6ths and minor 7ths.

~ by Matt on August 1, 2008.