Chord Of The Week 15/10/16 BEATLES CHORDS - Fmaj7 from 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' by The Beatles

bigjon

Last chord from this song (maybe Blackbird next week?) - it's the Fmaj7 created by the 4th note of the bass-note rundown below an Am chord during the introduction. The introduction goes Am x02210, Am/G 3x2210, F#m7b5 (= Am/F#) 2x2210 and finally this week's chord with the bass note of an F at the 1st fret on the bottom string, so Am/F or

Fmaj7: 1x2210 

Similarly to last week's tip that the construction of the F#m7b5 chord as Am/F# means that you can busk any m7b5 chord with a straight minor chord 3 frets up, this week's Fmaj7 chord interpreted as Am/F means that you can busk any maj7 chord with a straight minor chord 4 frets up.
That can lead to some interesting voicings, and in solos is the idea behind the Scott Henderson trick of playing chromatically ascending minor pentatonics over a ii V I progression - in the key of C you play a D minor pentatonic over the ii chord Dm7 (very inside), an Eb minor pentatonic over the V chord G7 (very outside) and finally using today's tip an E minor pentatonic over the I Cmaj7 chord (inside but a bit exotic-sounding).

The chord can be seen being played in an unconventional way at 0:05 in my heretically-preferred Jeff Healey cover of the song at

bigjon

Chord Of The Week Index updated with 168 discussions at
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