E Minor 6th
m6
0 - 3 - 7 - 9Minor + major 6th
About E Minor 6th
E minor sixth is one of the few sixth chords the guitar gives away. Its notes — E, G, B, C♯ — sit close to the open strings, and the C♯ can be fretted at the second fret of the B string while everything else rings. The result is the chord gypsy jazz uses as a tonic.
The notes
E, G, B, C♯. The C♯ is a major sixth above the root and a whole tone above the B below it. That interval against the minor third is what gives every minor sixth its double character.
Read from C♯ the same notes give C♯ half-diminished; over an A bass they give A9. The second is the more useful in practice — a guitarist playing Em6 over A is voicing a dominant without touching the root.
The chord is also the clearest illustration of how a sixth differs from a thirteenth: identical notes, different register. Placed within the octave it colours the chord; placed above it, it becomes an extension and behaves differently in voice leading.
On the fretboard
The open version keeps the low E and B ringing and frets the C♯ high. A compact four-string voicing at the seventh fret is what the swing idiom uses, struck and immediately damped.
Because E is the guitar’s resonant key, this chord sustains longer than its equivalents elsewhere — a practical difference in solo playing, where the ringing matters.
Where it shows up
As a tonic in E minor in gypsy jazz and musette, and as a rootless A9 in comping. Minor blues in E uses it on the home chord for a pre-war sound.
It also appears in film and television scoring from the 1950s and 60s, where the minor sixth carried an air of intrigue that later idioms abandoned.