MusicaLexica

If you’ve read up on how to figure out the notes in the basic chords, let’s continue with seventh chords.

A basic chord is composed of the root, the third, and the fifth.  The seventh chord adds one more note, the seventh.  Again, we’re building by stacking thirds, so if you’ve memorized that cycle of thirds you can get the letter names fairly quickly. Then you need to figure out which notes (if any) are flatted and/or sharped.

There are three main types of seventh chords that I will cover in this article: major seventh, minor seventh, and dominant seventh.  There are more types; I will save those for a future article.

A major seventh chord (I will abbreviate this as maj7) is a major chord with a major seventh added to it.  An example is the C maj7 which is composed of C - E - G - B.  C to B is a major seventh (check out the article on intervals for a refresher on this.)  Another major seventh chord made with natural notes is F - A - C - E, since F - A - C is a major chord and F - E is a major seventh.

A quick way to tell that an interval is a major seventh is that if you play the second note an octave lower, it’s a half-step below the root note.  In other words, E and F are adjacent to each other, so the distance from F to E is a major seventh.

The minor seventh is a half-step below the major seventh.  A minor seventh up from C is Bb instead of the major seventh of B.

To make a minor seventh (min7) chord, play a minor chord and add a minor 7th interval to it.  D - F - A is a minor chord, and C is a minor seventh up from D, so a D min7 chord is: D - F - A - C.

The dominant chord is a major chord with a minor seventh added to it.  G - B - D is a major chord, and G - F is a minor seventh interval, so G - B - D - F is a dominant seventh chord.  The dominant 7 chord is notated by just adding a number 7.  G7 is the way to indicate a G dominant 7 chord.

You notice I’m doing all these chords in the key of C again (no sharps, no flats).  Just like the table last time, there is an order to the seventh chords you can make with the natural notes:

C - E - G - B	C maj7
D - F - A - C	D min7
E - G - B - D	E min7
F - A - C - E	F maj7
G - B - D - F	G dom7
A - C - E - G	A min7
B - D - F - A	B dim 7

The diminished 7 chord is a diminished chord plus a minor 7.

Once again, we can take these basic chords and use them to spell out any 7th chord we want.  To change a major seventh chord into a minor seventh chord, drop the third and the seventh.

C minor 7: C - Eb - G - Bb.

F minor 7: F - Ab - C - Eb

G minor 7: G - Bb - D - F (because G7 already had a minor 7)

To turn a min7 chord into a dominant 7 chord, raise the third:

D7: D - F# - A - C

E7: E - G# - B - D

A7: A - C# - E - G

To turn a dominant 7 into a major 7, raise the seventh:

Gmaj7: G - B - D - F#

Now on to chords rooted with a flat or sharp note.

Db maj7: D maj7 is D - F# - A - C#.  Now bring each note down a halfstep to make Dbmaj7: Db - F - Ab - C

Notice that "flatting" a note does not necessarily make it a note with a flat symbol attached to it.  Bringing F# down a halfstep results in F.

How about F# min7?  Fmin7 is F - Ab - C - E (start with F maj7 and lower the third).  Raise each note a halfstep to make F# min7: F# - A - C# - E#

Another way to do the same thing:  F - A - C - E is F maj7, so F# - A# - C# - E# is F# maj7.  Lower the third to make F# min7: F# - A - C# - E#

It may seem like a lot to memorize the seven chords in the table above but that pattern will come in handy later on, too.  In any major key, the chord built upon the first note in the key is going to be a maj7, the next chord will be a min7, etc.  In a future article I will talk about this pattern of chords.