EmMaj7 is E, G, B and D# — with the major seventh added on top.
It sounds tense and wrong-footed. A minor triad carrying a major seventh: the semitone under the root over a minor chord is the first bar of a line cliché.
Minor tonic — the tonic of the melodic minor.
Play it instead of a m7 the chart lands on at the end of a ii-V, the tune is not sitting on the flat seventh in that bar.
Also written EmM7, Em(maj7), E-Δ7 or EminMaj7.
EmMaj7 is a minor I, never a ii. Classical harmony rarely ends on it; jazz lands a minor ii–V–i on it all the time, and then lets it settle to the sixth.
Listen for: The dominant’s third holds over the barline as the major seventh, then steps down to the sixth.
Works when the melody isn’t sitting on the sixth or the seventh.
Heard in“Autumn Leaves”, the last four bars of the A section“Nica’s Dream”, the opening chord
Walk one voice down from the root of a minor chord that is about to be a ii, and the line runs straight into the V: its last two steps are the dominant’s suspended fourth, then its third.
Listen for: One voice falls a half step at a time: the root, the major seventh, then the dominant’s fourth and third.
Every note of EmMaj7 is in E harmonic minor and E melodic minor.
Each of those is a page: the scale across the neck, and the chords it harmonises into — which is where EmMaj7 sits in it. Every scale.
Change one note of EmMaj7 and you have (drop the major seventh), (the minor third becomes the major third), (the major seventh becomes the sixth), (the major seventh becomes the flat seventh), (the fifth becomes the flat fifth) or (add the ninth).
EmMaj7 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.