Understanding 7th Chords The following article is about understanding 7th chords and how to create them. There are 3 main types of 7th chords. Major 7th, Minor 7th and Dominant 7th chords. They are written as follows: A Major 7th = Amaj7 A Minor 7th = Am7 A Dominant 7th = A7 Where they come from All chords are formed from scales. A standard major or minor chord is made up of the 1st note, the 3rd note and the 5th note of the respective scale. This is called a tonic triad. E.g.1 An A major chord is made up of the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes of the A major scale i.e. A, C# and E, these notes are stacked on top of each other to form an A major chord. E.g.2 The A minor chord will have a flattened 3rd compared to the A Major chord (The 3rd note in the minor scale is one fret lower than the 3rd note in the major scale) and therefore the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes will be A, C and E. Take a look at the standard A major and minor chords in the open position and you will see that they each consist of only these three notes: A Major A Minor A 7th chord builds on top of this tonic triad. To the above mix of three notes, you will add the relevant 7th note. Use the following rules to decide which 7th note you should add: Amaj7 = An A Major tonic triad with the 7th note of the major scale added in Am7 = An A Minor tonic triad with the 7th note of the minor scale added in A7 = An A Major tonic triad with the 7th note of the minor scale added in Copyright Clearwater Music School LTD 2013 ! Alex Danson Consider then that the building blocks of your new chords will be as follows: Amaj7 = A, C#, E, G# Am7 = A, C, E, G A7 = A, C#, E, G Note that the 7th note in the minor scale is one fret lower than the 7th note in the major scale. You can say therefore that the minor scale contains a flattened 7th. Look out for a future article on the Major and Minor scales. There are multiple ways of putting the above notes together on the fretboard and forming a 7th chord. Below are the most common and easiest to form: Amaj7 Am7 A7 For the sake of example, I have used the key of A. The same rules as above will apply to any key. Below is another worked example in the key of D. First find the triads: D Major: D, F#, A D Minor: D, F, A Next work out the relevant 7th notes: Dmaj7 will be the D Major triad plus the 7th note from the major scale which gives: D, F#, A, C# Dm7 will be the D Minor triad plus the 7th note from the minor scale which gives: D, F, A, C D7 will be the D Major triad plus the 7th note from the minor scale which gives: D, F#, A, C Copyright Clearwater Music School LTD 2013 ! Alex Danson Your chords in the key of D will therefore look like this: Dmaj7 Dm7 D7 See if you can work out 7th chords for a few other keys and check your answers by looking up the relevant chords. The most common 7th chords are listed in “The Guitar Learning Companion” which will be available soon from Amazon and direct from Clearwater Music School. Please comment with any questions you have and share this blog if it was useful to you. Find us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/clearwatermusic Or follow me on twitter: www.twitter.com/clearwateralex Copyright Clearwater Music School LTD 2013 ! Alex Danson