Em69 is E, G, B, C# and F# — with the ninth added as well.
It sounds cool and entirely at rest. No seventh, so nothing leans: a common last chord of a minor tune.
Minor tonic — nothing in it is pulling.
Also written Em6/9, Emin6/9 or E-6/9.
Em69 is a tonic minor chord: it acts as the i of a minor key rather than a ii, and it has no seventh. It is the minor sixth chord with its root raised a whole step to the ninth.
Listen for: The V’s fifth holds into the i as its ninth. On the minor sixth chord it falls a whole step to the root.
Heard in“Summertime”“Blue Bossa”“Invitation”“Alone Together”
In which keys. Every note of Em69 belongs to D major and B minor.
Every note of Em69 is in E dorian and E melodic minor.
Each of those is a page: the scale across the neck, and the chords it harmonises into — which is where Em69 sits in it. Every scale.
Change one note of Em69 and you have (drop the ninth), (the sixth becomes the flat seventh), (the sixth becomes the major seventh), (drop the sixth), (the minor third becomes the major third) or (drop the ninth).
Em69 is a minor chord — root, minor third, fifth. Minor chords on every root.
The common shapes and the derived voicings come from different places, and both are explained in how this site is built.
Shows each chord the way this style would voice it, and marks which of its alternatives belong to the idiom.