Seventh chords add depth and texture to piano music from almost any genre, such as blues or pop. Like their three-note cousins (triads), seventh chords offer various qualities.
In this section, we will introduce some of the more widely-used seventh chords – major, minor and dominant sevenths. Furthermore, we’ll go over some movable shapes that can be used with various root notes.
Major
Seventh chords possess the unique quality of sounding like triads with their seventh added. This occurs because the interval between their root and seventh notes equals to a minor third interval.
These chords are ideal for adding tension to your progressions and are also widely used in blues and rock music.
To play a major seventh chord, simply bar all six strings with your first finger at the fifth fret and place your other fingers where they feel most at home. Movable shapes may also be used; just ensure that the lowest string remains clear when doing this.
Cmaj7, for instance, is simply a regular G chord with an additional major seventh added on top. A dominant seventh chord must contain both sharps and flats to qualify as such; hence most dominant seventh chords in this chart have their second to last note sharpened.
Minor
Seventh chords are formed by stacking third intervals atop one another, much like triads. But unlike their cousin, which resemble snowmen, seventh chords in closed spacing have an extra-long snowman shape with roots on one string and three upper-string notes piled atop it.
Minor seventh chords provide a pleasing mellow sound and can often be found in pop music, although they’re also commonly featured in classical pieces such as Debussy’s “Claire De Lune.”
Minor 11th chords have a suspended quality to them, created by adding a minor third to a minor 9th chord at its root note. As with learning any new chord, the best approach to practicing minor 11ths is simply starting playing them and gradually increasing your level of expertise with them.
Dominant
As its name suggests, the dominant seventh chord is an intensely dissonant and harsh-sounding chord, and is the most widely used seventh chord. To form it, stacking a major third on top of a perfect fifth and adding a flat seventh are all essential ingredients of creating this dissonant sound – commonly denoted with 7(#11). You might also encounter it written as 7alt or 7b5.
Dominant seventh chords are popularly featured in cadences and are an effective choice when transitioning between sections with drama. Their resolution by fifth is especially suitable for blues and rock music genres.
When discussing seventh chord intervals, most textbooks utilize short notation for its three types – the triad and seventh. A chord comprised of a major triad and minor seventh above it is often called a major/minor seventh chord; similarly this convention applies to other intervals like half-diminished seventh.
Half-diminished
Half Diminished 7th chords (also called minor 7 flat 5th chords) are constructed by using a Diminished triad with a flattened 5th interval to produce them, creating chords which sound similarly to Dominant or Minor 7ths but feature different sounding top notes.
As with other chords, a seventh chord consists of three or more notes strung together into a chord form that can either be Major, Minor, Dominant, or Diminished in nature. But its arrangement and quality create its unique sound.
As with the other chords on your chart, if you truly wish to master these voicings across all keys it is imperative that they are learned in each of them – take a look at Skoove tutorial “Au Claire De Lune” as an excellent example of this in action!
As with all music, listening to your favourite songs will help you identify these chords when they appear; over time your ear will guide when and how best to use them. Soon you will start finding them in different progressions, adding extra tension to the music itself.