Seventh chords add another note to triads, creating four-note chords and giving them their distinctive sound used in musical genres like jazz, R&B and blues.
These chords can also be found in contemporary music such as pop, rock and film scores. Here’s an overview of five seventh chords you can incorporate into your piano playing.
Major Seventh
This chord combines the root, third, fifth, and major seventh notes from the major scale into a four note chord that sounds much more romantic than dominant 7th chords.
To form this type of chord, we combine a major triad with its complementary major 7th. This will produce a chord consisting of C, E, G and B; commonly written M7 or major 7.
This chord can often be found in blues and RnB music, though its use is also widespread among other genres. Learning how to construct these chords will greatly enhance your jazz piano playing and can add much emotion. Start listening to jazz today, and memorizing these chords! They won’t let you down!
Minor Seventh
This chord offers a much softer sound than its dominant seventh chord counterpart and is typically found in soft or romantic music. To construct it, lower the major 7th from a major triad by half step to create a minor seventh chord.
Next in this group is the minor 9 chord, created by adding a minor ninth to a dominant seventh chord. Finally, this group concludes with an augmented 7th chord constructed by stacking major 3rds onto minor seventh chords.
This table displays the notes and chord names for each seventh chord from A minor scale chord VIIa through VIIg. Additionally, note interval numbers from A major scale page will also be listed; these will be necessary when constructing them later. Chord symbols presented are for root position; they may be followed by letters such as b or c to indicate G dominant 7th chord in 1st inversion-A minor scale chord VIIb/c etc.
Half-Diminished Seventh
Half diminished seventh chords (commonly referred to as dim7, dm7 or deg7) are composed of four notes – a root note, minor third note, flattened fifth note and diminished seventh note – creating a melancholic and mysterious sounding chord that is frequently found in jazz music.
Seventh chords can add emotion and mystery to regular major or minor triads, creating tension and adding complexity to your music. They are integral parts of many genres of music such as jazz and blues – it would be hard not to hear one every time you turn on the radio!
For you to truly comprehend chords, a basic understanding of note intervals is required. To discover more, check out this step.
Fully-Diminished Seventh
As with the major seventh chord, the diminished seventh is a non-diatonic chord which can add tension. Composed of minor third, diminished fifth, and diminished seventh notes above the root note; unlike dominant (VI) chords which contain major thirds and have one step lower 7ths than roots; its distinctive sound works particularly well in jazz music and piano notes for C diminished seventh can be Gb, A and C – Skoove tutorials include this chord as part of mambo jazz progressions.
Diminished seventh chords are also known as common tone or non-dominant diminished seventh chords and can be used to form unconventional chords and new keys, especially when their roots lie outside of their leading tone (such as chords rooted on scale degrees other than C’s raised second or sixth scale degree).