Seventh chords and the colour they add
Major 7, dominant 7, minor 7 and half-diminished — the four you will actually use.
Building chords · 10 min read
Add one more third on top of a triad and you get a seventh chord. The four you need are: major seventh (1–3–5–7), warm and floating; dominant seventh (1–3–5–b7), restless and bluesy; minor seventh (1–b3–5–b7), smooth and neutral; and half-diminished (1–b3–b5–b7), tense and cinematic.
The dominant seventh is the engine of Western harmony. The interval between its third and its flat seventh is a tritone, and a tritone genuinely wants to resolve — outward or inward by a semitone into the notes of the home chord. That is why G7 pulls so hard toward C.
Sevenths are also the fastest way to change a genre without changing a progression. Play the same four chords as triads and it sounds like folk. Play them as sevenths and it sounds like soul. Nothing changed except one added note per chord.
- —Major 7 floats, dominant 7 pulls, minor 7 smooths, half-diminished aches.
- —The tritone inside a dominant 7 is what creates the pull home.
- —Adding sevenths is a genre switch, not a rewrite.
Take a four-chord loop you already play and add the correct seventh to each chord. Record both versions on your phone and compare.
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