Em7 · Cavaquinho

Put on a lo-fi playlist. Half a song. There — you just heard a chord like this one. Em7 is the minor chord with its jacket off: still serious, but done making a point of it.

Listen first

What you just heard

The recipe: take the EmEmEmEm you know — E, G, B — and add D on top. Now listen to the arpeggio, one note at a time and wait for the fourth note. It doesn't make the chord happy; it takes the weight off its shoulders. That's why bossa nova, neo-soul and the whole of R&B live here.

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 start with the first position below, with 3 open strings on your side — it's also the easiest one to play. Four notes sharing the same space, so there's one rule: every single one has to ring. Play it slowly, listen for each voice. A muffled chord here is a double waste.

Precision Tuner — Before you play these shapes, get in tune — chromatic tuner and reference tones · open in Chord & Fret

And keep the mid-neck positions in your pocket: in modern comping they're worth more than the open one, because they leave room for a voice on top. You'll get it the first time you play behind a singer.

What is Em7?

Em7: E minor with Seventh. The notes are E, G, B, D (fixed-do: Mi, Sol, Si, Re) — the degrees 1–b3–5–b7.

Where this chord lives

Here's the backstage secret: Em7's classic job is being the ii — the first piece of the ii–V–I, the most-used sentence in jazz and everything jazz ever touched. Across keys you'll find it as i7 in E minor, v7 in A minor, iv7 in B minor. In other words: this chord is almost never standing still; it's setting something up.

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 Em7 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. Typically, not a rule.

Every shape of Em7 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. Works offline, no account needed.

When you want to go further

For improvising, E Dorian (E F# G A B C# D · 1 2 b3 4 5 6 b7: the minor scale with a major sixth — the minor that smirks); E Aeolian (E F# G A B C D · 1 2 b3 4 5 b6 b7: the natural minor, the major scale's relative sibling); E Dorian ♭2 (E F G A B C# D · 1 b2 b3 4 5 6 b7: a dorian with a lowered second) contain the whole chord. And the jazz shapes at the bottom are these same four notes rearranged across the neck: same chord, arranger's polish.

Scale — The whole scale on the neck — in boxes or three notes per string, with an exercise and a tempo ramp · try it in Chord & Fret

Improvising in context

To improvise over Em7 as home, the E Aeolian 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:

• Gmaj7Gmaj7Gmaj7Gmaj7 — Relative major (♭III)
• A7A7A7A7 — It's the ii; resolves to this V

Reharmonize — Want richer substitutions? Reharmonize the progression in a tap · see it in Chord & Fret

Remember I said it's setting something up? This is it: A7. Play Em7 → A7 and you've just built half a ii–V — the gear that's been turning jazz for a hundred years.

Updated August 5, 2026