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Ebay mark7777_1
Em7 - e g b d
G - g b d
Em - e g b
Cmaj7 - c e g b
The point I was trying to make is that there are two ways of looking at this. You can follow the theory of drop 2 and drop 3 inversions, work out the notes, and find the fret positions that fit. Alternatively you can play the notes you want at whatever fret position falls under your fingers, and then work out which inversion it is.
Drop chords are more likely from arranging horn sections, accounting for the range of given instruments, song tempo etc. As @ArchtopDave says, it’s about the sound. But as with all things music they have been applied and adapted to the guitar to great effect and just so happen to make life easier once you get your head around them. So just a little explanation of some terms that might help...
Voices - the notes of a chord. We only use each note once so no duplicate notes.
Close voice - all the notes of a chord are within an octave regardless of inversion.
Drop 2/3/4 etc - extends the range of the voices beyond an octave by dropping the appropriate voice down an octave. But initially this can still create some awkward (but useful) shapes that we can then adjust in order to make them more finger friendly. Lets look at a drop 2 Cmaj7...
Root position close voice (C E G B - 1 3 5 7)
= x x 10 9 8 7. The 2nd highest note (G at fret 8 of the B string) drops down an octave. This gives you a 2nd inversion Cmaj7 (G C E B - 5 1 3 7) with the shape of x x 10 10 9 x 7. Now we’re going to rearrange these notes so that they’re in the same order, but on adjacent strings.
So x 10 10 9 x 7 becomes x x 5 5 5 7.
This x x 5 5 5 7 is much easier for most people than playing x x 5 4 1 0 which is the same inversion but close position. There are sound implications too, not better or worse, just different.
Voicings are a massive subject, but you can get 90% of what you need just by learning drop 2s on the top two string sets. Wes Montgomery played incredible chord solos and arrangements and he basically just stuck with drop 2s and a few drop 3s.
If you want to go in at the deep end, Ted Green did some incredible work on this which is only just starting to be published at tedgreene.com He called it his "V-system" - for four note chords, you can have 14 different types of voicing:
V1 - close voicing
V2 - 2nd voice from the top is dropped by an octave
V3 - 3rd voice from the top is dropped by an octave
...
The fun starts when you do things like drop 2 and 4, or when you start dropping voices by 2 octaves. He boiled it down to 14 possibilities (the maths is explained on the site but you'll have to take my word for it) and as far as I'm aware Ted Green practiced them all. He also spent a lot of time curating them - picking ones he liked and rejecting ones he didn't. He talks about some voicings being beautiful and others being a bit "meh" in his videos somewhere.
If you listen to his playing or have a look at any of his chord books they are incredible - this is the secret sauce behind how he came up with so many possibilities for something that seems relatively simple like a ii-V-I. As I say, the deep end...