Chord & FretE7 · Cavaquinho
Breathe in right now. Hold it. ...Feel your body asking for the second half? E7 is a song breathing like that — first half only. Hit play below.
Listen first
What you just heard
Why does it sound unfinished? Inside E7, two notes are at odds: G# and D. Now listen to the arpeggio, one note at a time and catch the second and the last note — the distance between them is the tritone, the tensest interval tonal music knows. E and B keep the house standing while those two argue inside it. And an argument, you know, demands a resolution.
Now it's your hands' turn
On the cavaquinho, four steel strings tuned D–G–B–D pack the chord into a small, bright space — every finger counts. So grab the first position below — 2 open strings to help you; it's also the easiest one to play. Now the experiment that explains this chord better than any explanation: play E7, let it ring a moment, then play A. Felt the door close? Do it again. That relief is the reason this chord exists.
1 more shape of this chord on the neck
That's 218,399 voicings and inversions in Chord & Fret Pro, ready to play.
Precision Tuner — Before you play these shapes, get in tune — chromatic tuner and reference tones · see it in Chord & Fret
Save the positions below for when the blues calls: over there, this chord is the house language.
Every shape of E7 lives in Chord & Fret Pro — 4 instruments, 16 tunings, 41 chord types and 57 scales, in every key. Start free. Unlock everything with Pro. Plays offline. Made by musicians, no ads.
Left-handed? Mirror's right here
What is E7?
E7: E Major with Seventh. The notes are E, G#, B, D (fixed-do: Mi, Sol#, Si, Re) — the degrees 1–3–5–b7.
Where this chord lives
Its job is fixed: E7 is a dominant, and dominants live as VII7 in F# minor, V7 in A major. Translation: wherever it shows up, the music is about to move. A chart full of 7th chords is a song that won't sit still.
Transpose & Capo — Need it in another key? Move the whole chart and find the easiest capo · use it in Chord & Fret
Identify Chord — Found a shape on your own fretboard? The app names it back · try it in Chord & Fret
Where it tends to go
Treating E7 as the home chord (I) of its key, it usually moves toward the pre-dominant (F#m / A) or the dominant (B / D#°) — and the dominant pulls back home. It's a tendency, not a law.
When you want to go further
For soloing, E Mixolydian (E F# G# A B C# D · 1 2 3 4 5 6 b7: the major scale with a lowered seventh — the blues accent); E Lydian dominant (E F# G# A# B C# D · 1 2 3 #4 5 6 b7: a mixolydian with a raised fourth: the dominant in formalwear) cover the whole chord. And look at the first swap on the list below: that's the famous tritone substitution, a second dominant hiding three whole steps away, the one arrangers reach for when they want to arrive at the same place by a prettier road.
E Mixolydian
4 more scale positions on the neck
Chord & Fret Pro maps 35,178 mapped scale shapes — hear and play them all.
The same E Mixolydian in its main shapes along the neck — pick whichever position sits under your hand. The rings mark the guide notes (the 3rd and 7th) that carry this chord's color.
Scale — The whole scale on the neck — in boxes or three notes per string, with an exercise and a tempo ramp · see it in Chord & Fret
Improvising in context
To improvise over E7 as home, the E Mixolydian scale covers it whole — it contains every note of the chord. And when the dominant (B) pulls back, the leading tone Eb is the note that wants to resolve home.
Swaps that work:
- Bb7Bb7Bb7Bb7 — Tritone substitution (shared 3rd–7th tritone)
- Bm7Bm7Bm7Bm7 — Forms a II–V: precede with this ii
- Fdim7 — Passing diminished (ascending)
Reharmonize — Want richer substitutions? Reharmonize the progression in a tap · open in Chord & Fret
The question this page asked has a one-click answer: A. Don't end the day without playing both in a row.