Well hello seventh chords, nice to see ya! Anyone want to learn a simple hack to make those bad boys easier to incorporate into your playing?
First, let’s recap a bit.
There are five different kinds of seventh chords, major seventh, dominant seventh, minor seventh, diminished seventh (also called fully-diminished), and half-diminished seventh. In worship music you will almost solely work with major sevenths and dominant sevenths, so that’s really all we’ll focus on today.
Dominant Seventh
So we know that a dominant seventh is a 1, 3, 5, b7 in any key. A triad and a minor seventh interval added on top.
In the key of C that would be a C, E, G, Bb. The dominant seventh is by default just referred to as a seventh without any tonal qualification. So if you see a Bm7 or a D7, that is by default the minor 7th interval stacked on top of whatever the base chord is.
Major Seventh
The major seventh refers to the tonal quality of the seventh interval. Not the base chord it’s added to. A major seventh chord is a 1, 3, 5, 7. So a Cmaj7 is a C triad (C, E, G) with a major seventh stacked on top (B) resulting in C, E, G, B.
The notation”maj 7” is primarily what you’ll see on worship charts and it refers to the maj 7th interval.
The Seventh Chord Hack
You may find, or have already found out, that it’s a challenge to quickly add 7ths to chords as it’s quite a jump for the brain to think 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and then stretch your fingers to hit the 7th tone.
A better way to approach this is to think backwards. My hands-on learners are gonna love this. 🙂
Instead of counting notes UP to the 7th, count down. The 7th is right below the 1. In the key of C, the B (7th) is right underneath the C (root or the 1).
Let’s build it together.
If you train your brain to add the 7ths at the bottom of the chord (or in the middle when you get more advanced), it will be faster and in most cases will sound better as well.
So try out this hack on other chords and see how you like it!
Weekly Challenge 💪🏻
Build the following 7th chords: C7, Cmaj7, G7, Gmaj7, A7, Amaj7, Bm7, Am7. Then practice playing the base chord alone, then again adding the 7th. C => C7 / C => Cmaj7 / etc…
If you’re comfortable, add an octave in the left hand.
Practice that this week and then post a video of your success in Tuesday’s Brag Box.
Drill of the Week! 🎶
This week’s we’re going to do a hand independence exercise! Similarly to our drill where we played a five-finger position but alternated one hand playing loudly and one hand playing softly, we will be doing the same five-finger position but this time alternating between legato (smoothly) and staccato (short, disconnected).
CLICK HERE to view the demonstration
Be sure to play slowly and steadily in the beginning. Don’t pick up the speed until you can play the whole thing without mistakes!
Practice this exercise 10x daily.
RESOURCES
I’m getting ready to open enrollment for a new round of Coaching! If you’re interested in hearing more, join the waitlist!
And don’t forget to join our Worship Community group. We’re going to be learning a lot together in the coming weeks!
