Hi, I'm Scott Houston. In this quick video I'm gonna show you how to figure out the
notes in seventh chords (7th chords) on any keyboard shaped object like a keyboard, piano or organ
ok let's dig in now what we're trying to accomplish here is to figure out some
way to very quickly figure out whatever the notes are in seventh chord (7th chord) now why
you would want to know that is because when you play piano in the style that I
teach you using chord symbols all the time and you may come across seventh
chords. Now seventh chords are the kind of chord symbol that just has a seven after
whatever the note name is. So it will just say C seven (C7) or Ab 7 or something like that
It will not have minor 7 or major seven or something like that
the seventh chord were talking about actually also called a dominant 7th if
you're serious there in person but yeah I'm talking about dominant seventh chord
with the kind of just look like C7, Eb7 or whatever it may be. ok so
here's what we're gonna do you figure those out I gotta give you just a tiny
smidgen of theory here so let's take a look at my keyboard now all I need to tell you
in case you haven't figured this out yet or no one's ever brought this up to you
there's a term used in music theory called a half step and what a
half step is is the closest distance between any two note it means it you've
gone from one note to the next and you haven't skipped anything between it. so for
example if I went from C to D,
that would not be a half step because I skipped over that black note so I half
step is the distance between the two closest notes, so it would be these. That distance
is one half step this distance is one half step this distance is one half step
this is one of those cases where there's no black note between so again the rule
has nothing to do with white to black or black to white the rule is closest
distance between any two notes alright so knowing what a half step is right
here is what we're going to do I got a little formula to use and it goes like
this you start on the note name we're gonna call that the root So if it says C7 The C
is what I'm talking about that's called the root of the chord start there.
to build a seventh chord (7th chord) here's how you do it you start on the root you go up
4 half steps then three half steps then another three half steps alright
that sounds kind of confusing but just remember this are or R-4-3-3 that'll give you
the four notes in the chord. let me show you ever go alright. We are going to
build a C7 chord here trying to build ok the root is C
that's the "r" I gonna go up 4 then 3 then another three so here we go
1234 that will give you the 2nd note
I'm going to do 3. 123
I've got one more three to go 123 that's it so a C7 chord has these four notes C, E, G and Bb
several quarters be flat
that's it
ok pretty cool that's the way this works so try it on a couple others but again
just so this doesn't get ahead of its formula for a seventh chord (7th chord) is our R-4-3-3.
that's a straight-ahead seventh chord(7th chord) let's do it on another
root to kind of prove that it works how about an Ab7. Find your Ab.
7 ok so you find your Ab that's the root. The formula was R-4-3-3. begin with
4 half steps 1234 and again when I say go up I'm talking about this half steps here so 4
half steps now I have to do two more of 3
Sure enough, that is an Ab7th chord.
so that's how you figure out a 7th Chord (7th chord). just remember that formula is R-4-3-3.
If you'd like to download a chart that has all of the different formulas for
different chord types in there not just the one that we're talking about in this
video click on a link somewhere here in the video description somewhere and I'll
be happy to provide you a chord chart and you can get it and print it out for
yourself and hopefully that'll help you with your chord types. so as always have fun!