Scales and Modes with Joshua Barnhart: 7th Chords

Meet Joshua Barnhart –

Welcome back to the third installment of our chord studies. This month we’re going to just look at 7^th chords. In most theoretical circles people will agree that unless the 5^th is augmented or diminished it is only used in support of the root, and is not a strong note of the chord and therefore you will notice that some of the 5ths are omitted. The Root gives us reference to our place in the key. The third gives us our chord quality, either major or minor. Finally the seventh is a color chord, major, minor, or diminished 7ths. Because there are so many 7^th chords we’re going to split this up into 2 lessons.

First up is Major 7.

This is a tricky one. You can either voice it like the sus4 first inversion triad in the previously lessons, or you can do a series of 4 5ths, which would extend off the standard 5 by 6 grid I have for the other chords.

Next time we’ll get into the augmented 7, and aug maj7, diminished and minor maj7.