Major 7 vs Dominant 7 Chords

sometimes in life you can change one tiny ingredient and end up with drastically unfair consequences like in college when I ran out of body soap and I took a shower with dish soap one time you think it's soap it's all the same thing not really true the same applies for guitar chords so today we're gonna talk about the difference between dominant seven chords and major seven chords we're gonna go over what exactly the difference is between them some different chord voicings arpeggio uses for them and maybe kind of practical ways that you can use them in songwriting or just kind of like displaying in general so basically major seven cores and down to seven chords are both different types of major chords and then built using the major scale so for a quick example let's just take the G Major scale okay so the notes of G major are g a b c d e F sharp and G and this is gonna be as is why I like learning a chord scale shapes is really really important so right you're about to start now with this root note and I go middle pinky index middle pinky index ring thank you I can just say a combination of these notes to make a chord now to make a major chord G major chord we just take the first skip the second give a third skip the fourth in the fifth a one three five is a G major a G a B and a d ok so that G major chord is gonna be kind of like our home base for extending and we're gonna extend this into a major seven chord and a dominant seven chord now the easiest way to do that is to kind of keep that pattern going take a note skipping out take a note skip a note take a note skip another note let's skip the six note in this Kia and grab the seventh note so I end up with G B D F sharp another interesting way it's really helpful to find the seventh note in any key instead of counting 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 you can always just count backwards one half-step kogo so always the 7th note in the key is always right before G B D F sharp alright that is how you get a major 7 chord any combination of those 4 notes will give you AG major 7 we'll talk more about the chord voicings and minute but I want to talk about the difference between that so if we were to spell that chord out it would just be a 1 3 5 7 that's what a chord spelling is it just tells you notes in the major scale that you need to make that chord now the difference between a G major 7 and a G dominant 7 as energy down to 7 has a flat 7 okay so we have a 1 a 3 a 5 and a flat 7 flatten you just going one half step down alright so the distance between a root note and a dominant 7th 7th note is called a minor 7th way G minor that interval is what's different about a G dominant 7th chord so a G major 7 chord is just straight up major goodness and my dominant seven chord is a major chord with a minor interval on top of it that's why when you play a G dominant chord or any kind of dominant 7 chord you get a little bit of attention because it's kind of like major and minor battling over the same over the same area alright whereas a major 7th chords it's kind of prettier because you're going through that major scale having a great time beautiful ok now different ways we can use this are gonna be using these as chord voicings so if you think about the the main differences being down to 7 has a flat 7 compared to major 7 of the exact same four notes except that 7th note is just flattened wanna then it can really help you out with chord voicings so let's take a let's take an easier open position chord voicing like a major 7 chord voicing it's just open a 2 D with your middle finger 1 G with your pointer finger to be with your ring finger and open here a major 7 okay you might even know you probably know a major chord voicing and like we said if we add that seventh note sometimes you just have to take the note right before the root note in this case your ring finger is on an a so we make that a major seven okay sounds beautiful now here's where that seven holes we just talked about if we flatten that ad just opens up okay so that's just a way to kind of like major major seven down to seven in fact that could be kind of like a really cool way to to kind of use something melodically to get somewhere right there is an example a major turn that into it a major seven turn that into eight dominant seven and that's always gonna lead you to a one cord all right so the interesting thing about a dominant seven chord is it takes you somewhere so we're gonna learn more about that with these chord voicings but I want to kind of go over maybe how to use these chord voicings in different positions okay so this is just an open voice of a a major seven chord now it's the same thing let's do it in C where C is a root I just took the root note and I'm moving to one two three frets higher okay now there would be our new major seven chord this would be like a C major C major seven I've got 3 a 5 D for Gia pinky is on 5 ba ok now I can flatten that 7 just by lifting it up and making a barre chord alright so is that dominant seventh chord Ian and this is where I want to talk about maybe in the uses of a dominant seventh chord as compared to a major 7th chord in where they exist in the key because when you just sit on this dominant seven chord there's a lot of tension there that's begging to be resolved on the one chord okay so it's useful to talk about where this chord exists and that all comes back to the major scale so let's go back to G major where we started off one two three four five six seven notes now any of those notes can become chords the one four and five become major chords one two three four five so in the key of G G major C major and D major are all chords that you'll see together G C D now if we were to extend those using just the notes in that key there's a very specific formula that will give us either major seven or nominal seven chords if you take the seventh note away from G in the key of G you get a G major 7th at G major turns into a G major 7 a couple different ways you can do that if you take the seventh third away from C and the G Major scale you end up getting a B and that turns C into a C major seven so the one in the four chord in any key can be turned into major seven chords always without having worry about going outside of key it'll always sound pretty good now that 5 1 2 3 4 5 g a b c d the 5 chord is where the dominant 7 chord exists if you just started out a D and you played the notes of G major starting on V D e f-sharp G a B and C the distance between D and C is going to be the same as if you play the D minor scale that's where that minor 7 comes in a minor 7 interval up but since we have a major 3rd there since it's a major chord because the 5 coordinating key is always going to be major any major key excuse me major that 5 chord becomes a dominant seven chord which might be a reason to one of the first dumb seven chords you see starting out on a guitar it's usually like a d7 because the key of G is a very popular key to play songs in okay so the five chord is gonna be the most natural place to put that dominant seven extension onto a and it has a really powerful kind of duty in that key because it always leads you back to the one alright it creates that that tension that needs to be resolved okay so again that's why in the key of g g a b c d d seven will almost always be followed up by a G major not always but in lot of cases in the key of c c d e f g a g7 chord almost always be followed up by a c so on and so forth you can do other Aki's like the key of F G a B flat C a c7 will almost always be followed up by an F alright so dominant seventh chords are a really great chord to kind of start implying some movement getting some movement in a chord progression something like that now they don't always have to be used in the same key one example that I can use my own songwriting is that song Parador where I have like a kind of a run of dominant seventh chords [Music] okay so that's kind of like I'm starting out for the e7 then I go to a g-sharp seven two and A seven back to G sharp seven right and that just kind of sets up you know just maybe like a directional thing that's kind of leading me back to like a home base type deal so I I personally think that down to seven chords are a great way to maybe start implying some movement to kind of get a little like wake up the path and to like some song writing it just kind of adds like a flavor to it that it's very bluesy dominant seven chords would be found all over the blues in fact you can play a whole blues progression just using dominant seventh chords in fact it's something that you'll always see in the Blues is like a one four five type deal so like a one four five in a would be like a - a d2 here [Music] those are just power chords I could share those all in a diamond seven chords okay so even though I'm kind of using notes outside of one particular key doing it in a bluesy way to go for a certain type of sound that has a little bit of like attention because of that minor seven rubbing up against a major chord it just kind of gives it a cool sound now major seven chords our personal favorite of mine and I really they can just be used to make absolutely anything prettier you can turn any major chord into a major seven chord and go outside of a key it you can even turn why not just get crazy turn minor chords into major seven chords and it always just kind of has like the movement of something kind of like whimsical mystically beautiful however you want to use it right so just a couple different voicings it's good to know some different voicings and kind of like how to use them together or stuff like that now the last thing I want to do is talk about maybe some arpeggios that you can use to kind of start working these intervals into maybe like a lead type layer so if we go back to a alright I'm gonna switch to a three note per string scale type thing because sometimes that can do more helpful needed so we have a a major we have one two three right from here to here to a five a one three five and maybe like a slide way I'm going from a a to his major third 5e to nine I can even grab that seven on the way out and then I can grab the five right here one three five and there's that major seven okay okay that's kind of like a way to start using maybe like a major seven type thing I can continue on into like a higher octave something like that again I'm really just taking an A and then I'm adding that major seven chord into it so if I wanted to do it again me like here right here this is 7211 d2 9g is straight down that's just a major seven thing now I could alter this to find out where that flat seven is right there [Music] to start working on it like some kind of dominant seven idea that you can kind of take from a root note so major seven I'm just going from one to a three to a five to a major seven one three five major seven down into seven 1 3 5 flat 7 1 3 5 flat 7 a lot of different ways that you can start kind of incorporating these and your playing it's all about knowing the intervals so na kijiye the 1 & 4 become major 7 and the 5 becomes down into sevens you can always work those together again in the key of G we have a progression that's like a 1 G major 7 and 2 a D dominant 7 to a C major 7 1 five for one you can also resolve on a major seven chord if you want to I think it sounds pretty good if you try resolving on a dominant seven chord you don't have any friends that's just kind of like you know yeah you got to get some resolution in there so I just wanted to take a minute maybe clear up the difference between those is something that I didn't get it right away and if you have any questions hit me up in the comment section Instagram Twitter the website and I'll talk to also you thanks a lot

Channel: Sean Daniel

Views: 142,616

Keywords: guitar music theory, whats the difference between a g7 and a gmaj7, major vs dominant, easy music theory, guitar chord theory, sean daniel, youtube guitar lesson

Id: TAYFIxxzy2w

Length: 13min 57sec (837 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 26 2017