About Ebm6 — drop 3 voicings
Ebm6 is Eb, Gb, Bb and C — Ebm with a major sixth added on top.
It sounds bittersweet — minor underneath, major on top. The major sixth over a minor triad comes from the melodic minor, and it is the classic jazz minor tonic.
Minor tonic — an ending chord in a minor key.
Ebm6 notes and formula
| Eb | Gb | Bb | C |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ♭3 | 5 | 6 |
Also written Ebmin6, Eb-6 or Eb minor 6. The same chord either way; which spelling you meet depends on who wrote the chart.
How to play Ebm6
The same operation one voice further down: the third voice from the top falls an octave and becomes the bass.
That leaves a bigger hole under the top three notes, so a string gets skipped: the muted string in the middle is the shape, not a mistake.
Ebm6 has 9 of them, on strings 6-4-3-2 and strings 5-3-2-1, from open position up to the 13th — every inversion the chord has: Eb in the bass, Gb in the bass, Bb in the bass and C in the bass. The one to learn first is the Gb shape at the nut.
5 of them sit on strings 6-4-3-2, so you can run the inversions up one set without changing strings — which is the whole reason to learn them as a family rather than as separate grips.
Play Ebm6 as a shell — root, third and seventh — and the spare string takes the 9 (F) or the 11 (Ab).
All 8 common shapes as fret numbers, lowest string first. Hover or tap one to see it drawn.
- xx1312, 1st fret, Eb, root position, top note Gb, all fretted
- x64546, 4th fret, Eb, root position, top note Bb, all fretted
- x6857x, 5th fret, Eb, root position, top note Gb, all fretted
- x68x78, 6th fret, Eb, root position, top note C, all fretted
- xx8878, 7th fret, Bb, 2nd inversion, top note C, barred
- x-9-10-8-11-x, 8th fret, Gb, 1st inversion, top note Bb, all fretted
- 11-x-10-11-11-11, 10th fret, Eb, root position, top note Eb, barred
- 11-13-13-11-13-11, 11th fret, Eb, root position, top note Eb, barred
How to use Ebm6
How you get to it. The turn that lands on Ebm6 is Fm7♭5 to Bb7♭9: the ii and the V of Eb minor, which is where a minor tonic is usually arrived at rather than simply begun on.
In which keys. Every note of Ebm6 belongs to C# major (the ii, the supertonic) and Bb minor (the iv, the subdominant).
What to play over Ebm6
Every note of Ebm6 is in Eb dorian, Eb melodic minor and Eb half-whole diminished.
Chords near Ebm6
Change one note of Ebm6 and you have Ebm (drop the sixth), Ebdim7 (the fifth becomes the flat fifth), Ebm69 (add the ninth), Ebm7 (the sixth becomes the flat seventh), EbmMaj7 (the sixth becomes the major seventh) or Ebmadd9 (the sixth becomes the ninth).
Ebm6 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.