Neo-Soul Chords: 12 Dmaj7 Inversions + 3 Cool Neo-Soul Licks
Neo-Soul Chords: Dmaj7 Inversions
The use of inversions in the Neo-Soul guitar style is widespread. The jazzy and sophisticated colors familiar with Neo-Soul often come from proper use of these inversions.
Check out the full guitar lesson about the Dmaj7 inversions and how to implement them in your playing:
Dmaj7 Inversions 4 sets PDF!!!
But what are inversions?
Inversions are inverted chords, meaning that a chord tone that is not the root note will serve as the bass note.
The inverted chords will color the music in many different ways, but their harmonic function will usually stay the same (as long as there is another instrument indicating the bass).
How to apply inversions in your playing
In this lesson, we will study the Dmaj7 inversions.
Dmaj7 chord contains four notes (chord tones) - D→F#→A→C#
This form of Dmaj7 is called a root position. Because Dmaj7 has four chord tones, we can create three more chords with different basses - 1st inversion Dmaj7/F#, 2nd inversion Dmaj7/A, and 3rd inversion Dmaj7/C#.
Check out these similarities between chords: Dmaj7/A is the same position as B-7/9. What determines the functionality of the chords is the bass which another player/playback will usually play.
☝️ When studying guitar chord inversions, it’s easy to discover relations between chords, parallel scales, and all kinds o useful fretboard positions. Applying these positions to your fretboard control will help not only in Neo-Soul but in EVERY other musical genre!
How to play inversions on the guitar:
To cover the whole fretboard, we will divide the guitar into three sets of strings, and on each set, we will build four-chord positions - one root position and three more inversions.
Dmaj7 Inversions 4 sets PDF!!!
Set #1 - strings 1-4
In the next video, you can see and hear the different colors coming out from each Dmaj7 inversion AND a spicy Dmaj7 Neo-Soul lick that will help assimilate these positions into your playing!
I highly recommend you’d try to learn these licks because each one is focused on different guitar areas. This way, when learning all three licks (one for each set of strings), you will cover the whole fretboard, giving you maximum control!
Set #2 - strings 2-5
Now, we’ll repeat the same process of flipping notes in the next set of strings.
Set #3 - strings 2,3,4 and 6
Once again, we’ll repeat the same process of flipping notes in the next set of strings.