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Kaii had combined several piano/keyboard method books and her life long music learning books to create this sequential music theory study for this website. This page is about the understanding of the different Seventh Chords. By clicking on the other colored links at the bottom of this page, the other music theory topics can be found easily.
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With different types of existing triads, composers even found more ways to extend the sounds of chords. By adding another interval of a third to any triad, a Seventh Chord was born. Each of the Seventh Chord has four different tones/pitches/notes that they are built together from any triad and a Seventh Degree from the Root. Therefore, the three pairs of tones/pitches/notes in a seventh chord share the interval of a third, either Major or Minor, such as C-E, E-G, G-B. See them on the following keyboard. By using a piano keyboard, the Seventh Chords can be easily understood visually.
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The most frequently used Seventh Chord is the Dominant Seventh Chord. With the Dominant Chord in any major or minor key, an interval of a Minor Third is added on top of the Dominant chord to make it a Dominant Seventh Chord. See the sample below for the key of C Major:
C Major Dominant Seventh Chord |
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There are five types of Seventh Chords: Major, Dominant, Minor, Half Diminished, and Diminished. Each one has different intervals of thirds between the tones/pitches/notes. The following table shows the differences between all five Seventh Chords.
Intervals
Major Seventh
Dominant Seventh
Minor Seventh
Half Diminished Seventh
Diminished Seventh
Degrees 5 to 7
Major Third
Minor Third
Minor Third
Major Third
Minor Third
Degrees 3 to 5
Minor Third
Minor Third
Major Third
Minor Third
Minor Third
Degrees 1 to 3
Major Third
Major Third
Minor Third
Minor Third
Minor Third
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Start here by following the "Root" of the seventh chords: C | C# | Db | D | D# | E | F | F# | Gb | G | G# | Ab | A | A# | Bb | B
On the sheet music, the Root position of Seventh Chords look like a stack of four pancakes in the following charts. By applying the accidentals to the seventh chords, the five types of seventh chords can be established clearly. The first group of seventh chords here are all based on "C" as their root:
"C" is the Root for these Seventh Chords
"C-Sharp" is the Root for these Seventh Chords
"D-Flat" is the Root for these Seventh Chords
"D" is the Root
"D - Sharp" is the Root
"E - Flat" is the Root
"E" is the Root
"F" is the Root
"F - Sharp" is the Root
"G - Flat" is the Root
"G" is the Root
"G - Sharp" is the Root
"A - Flat" is the Root
"A" is the Root
"A - Sharp" is the Root
"B - Flat" is the Root
"B" is the Root
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This section is to show the inversions of the Seventh Chords. There are three inversions for each Seventh Chord. All five types of Seventh Chords, Major, Dominant, Minor, Half Diminished, and Diminished, all work the same way. Use the Root to find the correct inversions.
D Dominant Seventh Chord Inversions (in the Key of G Major)
The next topic in this Music Theory site is all about the "Secondary Dominant." You may want to review the previous pages. Thank you for reading!
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