What is a Minor 7th (Min7) chord?

If you're looking for something to spice up your minor chords, look no further. Minor 7th chords are a very cool-sounding variation on the typical minor chords we know and love.

To play a minor 7th (sometimes written as "min7", "-7", and probably other ways that I never use) chord, we play the 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 7th note of a minor scale. It's much like how we construct a minor chord (which I discuss in more detail here), but with the added 7th. Here are some examples:

An A minor scale is: A B C D E F G A, so an Amin7 chord would be: ACEG
An F# minor scale is: F# G# A B C# D E F#, so an F#min7 chord would be: F#AC#E
A G minor scale is: G A Bb C D Eb F G, so a Gmin7 chord would be G Bb D F

Minor 7th chords can be found in many styles of music, including pop, rock, jazz. They tend not to work very well with heavily distorted guitars, so they're not as common in really heavy music like metal or really loud rock, but occasionally there are exceptions (none that come to mind as I write this, unfortunately).

Minor 7 chords are definitely worth knowing and adding to your musical vocabulary. Here's an example of one of the easier minor 7 chords to play on the guitar.

A minor 7 (Am7) chord

I used paint to make it (visual art is not my strong suit). There are other ways to play minor 7 chords, which I will go into in more detail in the future.