Chord Of The Week 5/9/15 - SRV's 'Superstition' Em7 chord

bigjon

Continuing my series on Stevie Ray Vaughan's chords following the 25th Anniversary of his death which was on August 27th, here's an unusual Em7 voicing from the verse of his cover of Superstition - I've not seen anyone else play this most common of chords with this voicing. Great for funk, as here, because it's mostly quite high up so can cut through above all the other instruments, and the fact that it's got no barring means that tight control of string-damping for a more choppy effect is possible.

Em7: x7x787

There's a good view of him playing the chord at 0:28 in this video.

bigjon

Chord Of The Week Index updated with 109 discussions at

http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/598/chord-of-the-week-index

Megii

I use that one! With respect, it's an example of a "drop 3" type of voicing, used by a lot of jazzers - take a close-voiced 7th chord, and drop the 3rd note from the top down an octave. Has a cleaner kind of sound than the barre chord with an extra 5th on the D string. Also makes it easier to alternate with a minor 6 chord i.e. x7x787 to x7x687. The note on the high E string can be missed out to give the useful 3 note voicing x7x78x also.