Here’s a harmony and chord lesson for you!

It’s an area of confusion for many people, but with this series it will clear it up for you!

We’ll start with the basics, assuming you know what a major and minor chord already is.

In this lesson, we’re going to look at the Dominant 7th and Major 7th chords.

People get these chords mixed up as the major is the basis of both chords, and mix one up with the other…

So here’s what these chords are:

Dominant 7th Chord

Notation: C7

This chord is made up of:

Root

Major 3rd

Fifth

Minor 7th

Here are some Dominant 7th chords in various keys, starting with C major:

Notice that the 7th note is flattened from the major 7th note of its respective scale.

The reason the name dominant 7th came about, is that the 4 note chord built on the dominant or 5th note from the tonic (1st, 3rd, 5th and 7th note from the dominant) using the tonic scale, produces this type of chord.

For example, in C major, the dominant is the 5th note of its scale, which is G. If you build a 4 note chord on the G with the scale of C, you have G B D F, which is a G7 chord.

As another example, in F major, you do the same thing and end up with C E G Bb, which is the C7 chord.

Major 7th Chord

Notation: CMaj7 or CM7

This chord is made up of:

Root

Major 3rd

Fifth

Major 7th

Here are some Major 7th chords in various keys, starting with C major:

Notice that the 7th note is simply from the major 7th note of its respective scale.

What to do:

So practice these chords on the piano, and you will easily recognise them, as they are commonly used.

The Dominant 7th chord is commonly used before resolving to the root chord in all forms of music, as the most definitive resolution.

The Major 7th chord has a greater dissonance to it as the major 7th note clashes with the root note as it is only a semitone away from the root an octave above.

Tags: harmony, harmony lesson, harmony tutorial, piano chords, Piano Chords Lesson

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 21st, 2012 at 2:29 pm and is filed under chords and harmony. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.