Seventh chords are integral to expanding your harmonic repertoire on the piano and creating diverse genres of music. They shape mood and texture that define each genre uniquely.
A seventh chord is a four-note chord composed of notes that can be stacked in threes. These three notes are known as the root note, middle note and top note – with their interval between roots and middle/top notes defining its quality.
Major Seventh
An added major seventh can add complexity and power to triads, and is especially effective in Jazz, R & B and Blues as well as film music and popular chord progressions. Furthermore, major seventh intervals are common opening notes of melodies, such as in “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”
To play a Major Seventh chord, simply take any regular Major Triad and add one note that’s half step below its root (e.g. if playing Cmaj7 chord, simply add C, E and G). When compared with its plain triad counterpart, this chord sounds completely different in sound quality.
Flattening the major seventh can produce a more diminished sound by simply dropping its C to C flat (i.e. a Cm7). This chord can also be found frequently used in Mambo Jazz music. Though difficult to hear and play initially, once mastered it becomes an incredible tool for song voicings such as those found in Skoove tutorial “Au Claire De Lune.” Take a look!
Minor Seventh
Minor seventh chords can be more intricate and expressive than their major counterparts, often featuring an extra seventh interval above the root triad, adding tension and drama to music.
Minor keys provide more harmonically interesting chord progressions when played using sevenths that may be either major or minor, augmented, dominant, or augmented-major – meaning you could create vastly different chord progressions when using minor keys. Understanding these variations will help create more harmonically intriguing progressions when performing minor keys music.
As with triads, seventh chords may also be stacked so that all their notes fall on adjacent lines or spaces of the staff; this arrangement is known as closed spacing. A seventh chord stacked this way resembles an extra-long snowperson: its bottom (or bottom middle), two middles, and head are visible.
At first, identifying a triad can be dauntingly complex; to quickly make things easy we use the same method for identifying its seventh interval as described previously: counting half-tones or semitones between its root note and third, fifth, and seventh notes to count the number of half-tones or semitones between third, fifth, and seventh notes to establish which seventieth interval is present in any chord we see; using this information we can then name and quality this chord: typically diminished, half-diminished majorminor and dominant; other varieties that cannot be identified simply through identification by their type of triad and seventh interval combination can only by its type triad type and its seventh interval configurations.
Dominant Seventh
The dominant seventh chord is an integral component of jazz music, yet can also be found in blues songs and rock music. For example, The Rolling Stones used it in their hit “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” while Doors used a D7 chord in their hit “Roadhouse Blues.”
Dominant sevenths feature an intense dissonance between their third and seventh to create their signature sound, giving it its unique quality. Like its minor cousin, a dominant seventh can be built in any scale degree; for instance in C major scale G is a dominant seventh chord that can occur anywhere on its fifth scale degree – for Roman numeral analysis this chord would be V7 and appear as part of any minor key’s fifth scale degree as an instance of V7 analysis.
An effective way to create a dominant seventh chord is through rootless voicing that uses only its roots, fifth and seventh of a triad. You can play this chord either using just one hand, or use several open shapes that spread the notes out across both hands.
Understanding different seventh chord types as variants of one chord type can be immensely useful in building your chord vocabulary. Understanding their strengths and weaknesses will allow for better decision making when selecting chords to add to your repertoire.