Worship Musician Magazine August 2024 | Page 48

GUITAR
E MINOR CHORDS - ENHANCED | David Harsh
Photo by Kayti Heuser
Let ’ s discover some mighty beautiful color chord variations on E minor today that will enhance our arrangements of worship songs in a significant way .
Starting with an E minor chord , we ’ re going to expand upon it today , adding some degrees that enhance the sound of this chord . Let ’ s start with E minor , which you probably know .
Is an E minor chord a good chord ? Yes . Can it be improved upon ? Also , yes .
At a certain point , after you ’ ve gotten some open chords under your fingers , you might be wondering , “ Is there more ?” And there usually is . Knowledge is power , and it can help you unlock your fretboard in a way that playing by shape might not .
I encourage you to watch the video that supplements this article , because I break down each chord , show you how it sounds , and I even have a bonus E minor color chord that I ’ m not including here , just to provide a little incentive .
The video is available by clicking here or on the thumbnail on the next page . I can ’ t promise that a mad scientist won ’ t cheerfully welcome you into a certain Chord Lab .
It ’ s a good start . And for some beginning guitarists , it ’ s a great place to stay for a while . But let ’ s try adding some additional notes to enhance this chord .
The first degree we ’ ll add to this chord is the minor 7 . It ’ s the 7 th degree in the E natural minor scale , which is D . This is one version of an E minor 7 chord I like , and you can finger the D on fret 3 of string 2 with your 3 rd finger or your 4 th finger .
But I also like to add a G on the 3 rd fret of the 1 st string , which gives us another minor 3 rd up top . The thing I like about this voicing is that it allows me to anchor my fingers in such a way that the keys of E minor and G major feel very intuitive .
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