u/Ancient-Resident-647

Hi all, We are continuing my music theory series with a post on seventh chords. If you followed my last post and feel comfortable with building the 4 basic types of triads, this is a good place to stop next.

There are three types of seventh chords: Major 7th, Minor 7th, and Dominant 7th. Lets learn how we construct these chords!

For this example i will be using the Key of C major! I included it below for your reference.

C D E F G A B

For a Major 7th chord, we are going to be building off of our major triad! Which for review is 1-3-5 or C-E-G for C major. When we want to build a major 7th chord, we need to add the note B, which is the 7th of C major. It is as simple as this! So our formula for a Major 7th chord would be 1-3-5-7, or C-E-G-B for a C Major 7th!

Just a reminder that this formula works for every key!

For a Minor 7th chord, we are starting with the minor triad, which is 1-b3-5, or C-Eb-G for C minor. When we build a minor 7th chord, we need to add a b7 to our miinor traid! SO the formula would be 1-b3-5-b7! In the case of a C minor 7 it would be C-Eb-G-Bb!

Lastly we have our dominant 7th, which is my personal favorite 7th chord! For our dominant 7th we are starting with our major triad, 1-3-5 or C-E-G for C major. Now we are adding a b7 to our major triad! So our formula would be 1-3-5-b7 or C-E-G-Bb for C dominant 7th. A small note for Dominant seventh chords, they are often just called 7th chords and are usually just written like C7 instead of Cdom7!

Title explains it all. Lets jump in!

The first four triads you should learn how to construct will the be the building blocks for all the chords you could ever want to create.

For our example i will be using C Maj, C min, C dim, and C Aug.

First, we always use the major scale of the Triad we are trying to construct, so we need to start with the C major scale. I will label the scale degrees below!

C D E F G A B

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Lets start with our Maj triad. The formula for a Major triad is 1-3-5. So our C Maj is C-E-G. This is the easy one!

Now to our Minor triad, exactly the same as the major triad but with a Flat 3! 1-b3-5 is our formula, so our C min is C-Eb-G. Notice when i say flat or sharp i mean moving a semitone up or down, or 1 fret for our guitarists out there!

Next for our Diminished triad. Our formula here is 1-b3-b5. So now we have a flat 3 and a flat 5! This looks like C-Eb-Gb.

Lastly we look at our Augmented triad. The formula for this is 1-3-#5. So our C Augmented would be C-E-G#!

It is super important to know these 4 triads, because these are the base for most of the more complex chords you know! Chords like Maj 7, Dom 7, Dim 7, Min 9, Ect. Any of these chords are much easier to understand once you realize we are starting with one of these four triads, and then adding notes from there!

This is also great for improvising! Once i understand how triads are created and the notes in my triads, it makes it much easier to understand which notes i should be targeting when i solo.

Hope this helped!

Today lets talk about an essential skill that every musician should have! How to build a major scale from any note!

Lets start with some background information, the first thing you will need to know is all of the notes in music, including sharps and flats. This includes A B C D E F G, with sharps (or flats) in between ALMOST every note. The exception to this rule is there is no sharp or flat in between B-C and E-F.

Now we can finally build our Major scale. Pick any note, and follow this formula! WWHWWWH. The W refers to a whole step, which would be a two note jump. From C -C#-D is a whole step. The H refers to a half step. Which is a one note jump. From C-C# is a half step.

So starting on any note, you can now build a major scale, as long as you follow the formula! WWHWWWH

Often, people will shy away from learning music theory when they start to learn an instrument. It has a negative stigma and can be viewed as "boring" and has been said to "kill creativity".

But music theory doesn't mean hitting the books for hours without touching your instrument.

One simple concept that every musician should understand is how we create chord progressions! It goes like this:

Usually, musicians will start by determining what key the song will be in. Lets take the key of C major for this example.

The next step would be to write out the notes in the C major scale, because this is what they key is based on. These notes are C, D, E, F, G, A, and B. We number these notes 1-7.

Once we do this, we just need to memorize our major scale harmony. The fun part is once we do this once, it applies to all keys!

The harmony is as follows: 1-Major, 2-Minor, 3-Minor, 4-Major, 5-Major, 6-Minor, 7-Min7flat5.

Apply this formula to the notes of the scale, and boom! You are ready to write a chord progression!

Curious what the population of this sub will say about this one. I work with a teacher! He is great and has helped me progress a lot. If you work with a guitar teacher, they most likely have a teacher themself!

Bit of a non technical one here. I would tell myself to give myself grace and be patient. Learning the guitar is difficult, and it takes time to make progress and achieve even the smallest of goals. Accept yourself where you are at and enjoy the process, the results will come.

Also, it is ok to be imperfect in your practice. Sometimes you will miss a day, sometimes you wont be as focused as you would like. This is ok. You are only human, and are trying your best. Be gentle with yourself.