Memorize Minor 7 Chord Inversions the Easy Way

👋 Hi! Today, I’m continuing my series on Arpeggiated Minor 7 Chord Inversions and the best way to memorize them for solo chord melody Jazz guitar. If you’re new to this site, be sure to check out Part 1 first – we talk about Major 7 Chord Inversions there.

Again, we’re not thinking linearly in these lessons; instead, we’re thinking positionally. Doing so lets us memorize Minor 7 Chord Inversions easier by thinking and learning them in groups of 4. Lastly, there are some cool ways to connect these chord inversions melodically. To practice, I’d recommend using the Minor 7 Chord Inversions as a “skeleton” where we can look around for more extensions like our 9th and 11th.

How Chord Inversions are Made:

Before we get into the main lesson, I will push pause for a second and talk about how we create chords in the first place. To be defined as a chord, we need a minimum of three notes. Because of that, everything starts with triads. We create a chord voicing by taking the 1st note, 3rd note, and 5th note from the chord’s major key or scale. See an example:

This chord is a C Major Triad, consisting of the notes C – E – G. To create a 7th voicing, we add the 7th note of the scale in addition to the 1st, 3rd, and 5th, giving us the notes C – E – G – B:

Finally, to make a chord a Minor voicing, we need to flat some notes. In the case of the triad, we need only flat the 3. In the case of a Minor 7th Voicing, we need to flat the 3rd and the 7th:

But what about Minor 7 Chord Inversions?

Now that we know how a chord is pieced together, Chord Inversions are really simple to understand. We are simply “cycling” through the chords notes, and starting the chord on a different root. So, for example, instead of starting on C (C – E♭ – G – B♭), we’re going to start on the 3rd note: (E♭ – G – B♭ – C). This is known as the first inversion. To create the second and third inversions, we simply start the chord on the 5th and flat 7th! Alright, enough theory. Let’s get into it!

---

Minor 7 Chord Inversions:

For this lesson, I’m going to using Minor 7 Chord Inversions in the key of G (G – B♭ – D – F). A few important notes before we proceed: 

• We are focusing on the Melody Note. We want to arpeggiate the Melody. The root might not fall in a perfect arpeggio.
• Again, Pay attention to the melody note! 😀 This is Chord Melody guitar after all, and I want you to focus on the melody note and it’s surrounding tensions / extensions.
• Practice slow, with a metronome

---