Major 7th Versus Dominant 7th Chords On Guitar | Steve Stine | GuitarZoom.com

now the seventh is a little bit confusing for people and so I'm going to spend a little bit of time talking about this and show you what it looks like on the guitar and that sort of thing so if I was going to be on the chord we're going to go back to the key of C because the key of C has no Sharps and no Flats okay so in the key of C the chord c is c e and G the root the third the fifth so the seventh of the chord c would be b c e g B g2b is also a third remember we're just stacking thirds over and over and over so c e GB now the problem with music that I used to have a problem with when I was trying to learn music theory is the fact that sometimes we call things major minor and sometimes we call things uh Sharp flat um and you're going to start experiencing that a little bit right now Sev were very confusing for me um and and so what I'm going to do right now is kind of explain to you how this works when we talk about seventh chords if you do a lot of blues uh if you play blues or folk music and things like that we tend to utilize what's referred to as a dominant 7th if you play a lot of jazz um you tend to see what's referred to as a major 7th and and all of those terms used to confuse me terribly so what I want to do is kind of give you some visual aspect of these and and explain logically what's happening and then show you on the guitar a little bit so if we took the notes C EEG which we know is a major chord right major 3r over minor 3rd and we add it on the next third which is B the distance from G to B is a major third okay so we'd have C to e which is a major third e to G which is a minor third which creates a major chord now we're adding on another major third when we add on that next major 3D it's referred to as a major sth so if you had the notes c e g and B you would be playing a major 7th chord C major 7 Okay C major 7 if you're playing jazz you're going to see that a lot but if you're playing blues or or pop music you don't see that a lot you see what we call C7 or D7 or A7 or G7 those are referred to um as seventh chords of course but the technical term is what we refer to as dominant 7th now that can get really confusing so what I want to do is just explain to you a little bit about how I used to visualize this now for us to play a C7 chord for instance a C7 which is this guy kind of the again bluesy sort of sound okay that C7 chord is c e g B flat now that chord does not fit in the key of C theoretically C EEG B flat because we're getting a B flat key of C doesn't have a B flat key of C doesn't have any sharps or flats so that C7 chord has to exist in a different key okay so for instance what key could that exist in well it could exist in the key of f because F would get a c on its five f g a b C right so we could get a c there okay the confusing part is is is when a dominant 7th is and when a major 7th is and uh you know the chord being major and the chord being minor so what I'm going to do is start at the very beginning and just show you how this whole thing works in my mind what I used to do when I think of a C7 chord C7 not major 7 but C7 I think of that seventh note as being a whole step back from the root okay instead of going my root third fifth 7th to figure out the seventh um in terms of like the major third and minor third all I used to do in college is I would think about it if I wanted a dominant seventh chord that 7th would be a whole step back from the root so for instance in a C7 chord you get C EEG but the seventh is B flat B flat is a whole step back from C so for instance if I was on a d chord any old D chord whatever it was I wanted but I wanted a dominant 7th or that bluy 7th I'd have to think a whole step back from D well what's a whole step back from d c so I take my D major chord which is d f Shar and a and I use C I add in the note c d f a c if I want major 7th major 7th is only a half step away from the root so if I wanted a D major 7 then I would have d f sharp and a the chord isn't going to change C sharp okay now again it's kind of a generalization but Major Seventh chords tend to be more Jazzy and dominant seventh chords tend to be more bluesy okay so the def definition of a major 7th chord is a major chord with a major third on top of that root third fifth 7th that that space between the fifth and the seventh is a major third the definition of a dominant seventh chord is again a major chord root thir fifth with a minor thir on top of that so root thir 5th 7th the fifth to the 7th is a minor third okay but my shortcut if it helps you at all always was and it's still is when I think about my fretboard and I'm going to find my notes on my fretboard is a half step or a whole step back from the root so if I'm on a G chord and I want a dominant 7th I'm adding an F if I want if I'm on a G chord and I want a major 7th then I add in F sharp so let me show you as a bar chord okay so right here I've got a G major bar chord the notes I'm playing are g d g b d and then G again so the way we usually make a seventh chord is we take off the pinky that creates a seventh chord okay if you've done your six string bar chords you know that if you haven't I would strongly suggest you start learning your bar chords obviously um so with this dominant seventh chord here what I did was I took I have three G's in this chord right now I do not need three G's okay so what I do is take this G off the guitar well if I take my pinky off the guitar okay I'm taking that G and I'm making it an F G is coming off which means that now the bar right here I went from G to F so that's a seventh chord so G7 dominant 7th is an F it's a whole step back major 7 G major 7 is adding an fshp instead of an F so instead of doing this we do there's a couple ways you can do this I I'll kind of show you the the way relative to the bar that I'm making right now so this is a G major chord if I wanted major 7th if I took this off I'd get dominant 7th so what I'm going to do is I'm going to put my fingers like this I'm going to put my middle finger on the um fourth string fourth fret put my third finger on the third string fourth fret and then put my pinky up here on the uh fifth string fifth fret [Music] so you can kind of hear the the little Jazzy element of of that major 7th

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Keywords: Steve Stine, GuitarZoom, Guitar Zoom, Major 7th, Dominant 7th, music theory basics, music theory pdf, music theory for beginners, basic music theory, guitar music theory, how to play guitar, guitar tabs, easy guitar songs, guitar scales, guitar fretboard, learn guitar, guitar songs, online guitar lessons, beginner guitar chords, free guitar lessons, beginner guitar lessons, guitar lessons online, best guitar solos

Id: CiqTUTr9-pk

Length: 8min 23sec (503 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 01 2016