Welcome back to the music theory series. For most of this series when we refer to chords we’ve been talking about basic triads. Today we’re going to look at Major seventh chords. So what is a Major seventh chord? Let’s review a basic C Major scale first. On both the staff and the piano keyboard…
As you remember from earlier posts a basic triad makes up the notes C E G. That’s the first, third and fifth degrees of the C Major scale. But what if we added the seventh degree of the scale? That would be C E G B. The spelling out of that chord would be a C Major 7th chord. Let’s see what that would look like on the staff and the keyboard…
When you play them you’ll notice that the chords sound more colorful. You can construct them for any major triad based off any major scale. Until next time practice building major 7th chords and play them up and down the keyboard.