Seventh chords play an essential part in expanding your harmonic repertoire on piano. They help set the mood across almost all genres.
A seventh chord can be defined as a triad with the addition of one note one interval above its root note. Careful evaluation must be undertaken regarding each stacked note to assess its quality as an instrument for music composition.
Major Seventh
The major seventh is one of the most frequently heard chords in contemporary music, often used for love songs due to its warm sound. Constructed on top of a root major triad, its purpose is simply harmonic beauty.
Triads are the building blocks of Western music harmony, providing the basis for most chord progressions. To form a major seventh chord progression, add one note half a step below the root triad’s root note to form a new triad triad.
Chords can be identified formally based on their triad and seventh qualities: when major chords feature diminished sevenths (major/minor seventh chords); conversely when diminished chords feature major sevenths, these are known as diminished/major seventh chords.
To determine the quality of a seventh chord, begin by drawing its root on a staff and visualizing its key signature, before writing out its notes for both its triad and major (or minor) seventh.
Minor Seventh
Minor seventh chords can add depth and variety to your music, providing it with its signature warm sound and versatile use in various genres of music – you may even recognize some old classics like Debussy’s Clair De Lune as examples!
This chord’s first three notes form a diminished triad, while its 7th note sits one step below its octave to create a diminished 7th chord quality that has an unpleasant dissonant quality, but will usually resolve down by one step.
Seventh chords can be built on any scale degree, though when constructed on the tonic scale degree of a minor key they are known as minor-major seventh chords. Chords constructed on this degree have an especially powerful sound and fit well within harmonic minor scales; additionally they’re often employed as dominant chords when used within minor keys.
Dominant Seventh
The dominant seventh chord is an extremely versatile chord used in virtually every style of music. It creates an effective tension that is resolved with a cadence back to tonic chord, while its distinctive sound stems from flat seventh which creates tritone interval that’s hard to settle.
To form a dominant seventh chord, just add an extra minor third above a major triad – this formula for creating this chord reads as: major triad + 3.
If you want to alter the tonality of your dominant seventh chord, simply adjust its flat seventh up or down by half steps – this will create either a minor seventh or major seventh tone.
Blues songs often use dominant seventh chords if their guitarist wishes to play in a lower key, such as when The Rolling Stones integrated one into (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.
Augmented Seventh
An augmented seventh chord is an extension of a basic three note chord structure, adding another interval into it. By including a seventh note, an augmented seventh chord can add color, emotion and function to your music and is used by many genres such as Jazz, R & B and Blues.
Augmented seventh chords consist of a major triad and an augmented fifth, often abbreviated as +7 or 75.
To gain an in-depth knowledge of this chord, it is beneficial to review triad theory. Triads form the base for all seventh chords and can be found across any scale.
Each triad has its own characteristic chord quality based on the note intervals that compose it, with four general classes of diminished, minor, major and perfect chord qualities to consider. Augmented seventh chords offer unique tension-inducing qualities as they contain dissonant inner intervals which create dissonance within their compositions.