One Of the Most Beautiful of Chords – the minor 7th chord

Good morning. This is Duane and today I’d like to take up one of the most beautiful of all chords, the chord that’s really a workhorse chord because it’s used so much in music, because it’s such a mellow chord, and that’s the minor 7th chord. Minor 7th chords sound like this. See that? Beautiful sound.

So let’s take it from the beginning here. If we’re playing it in the key of C then we’re basing our playing on the scale of C which is eight notes that runs from C to C. Following our rule of whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step. Okay?

So a major chord is the root, third and fifth of that scale. To make it minor, I simply lower the third a half step and then to add a 7th, I don’t use the seventh note of the scale, I use the lowered 7th. That’s why it’s called … well, it’s not why it’s called a minor 7th but it is called a minor 7th. The interval here is called a minor 7th, but the chord is also minor so that name kind of has a double entendre, okay? Which is fine.

Minor 7th, that’s how it’s formed. And notice it’s a stack of minor third, major third, minor third. Okay? Minor third, in other words, not a major third there but a lower third, a step and a half. Then for the next interval, is a major third and then the next interval is a minor third. So it’s minor third, major third, minor third. In other words, it’s well balanced and I think that’s why it’s so beautiful. It’s just a well-balanced chord.

Later we’re going to take up the minor 7th with the 9th. That’s also a beautiful chord. I need two hands to play because my hands are smaller. It sounds like that and that’s a beautiful chord. I think even very, very beautiful because it’s so well balanced too. That’s a minor third, a major third, minor third, major third. I mean it’s totally balanced, that minor 9th.

Okay, let’s go through the twelve possibilities, the twelve minor 7th chords and form them one by one. We form the C minor 7th chord by making a minor chord and then adding the 7th. So let’s do it with that. That’s F major, F minor we lower the third, that’s the dominant 7th or the lowered 7th. If you get this sound, you know you’re playing the wrong chord. That’s a major 7th. If it sounds like that, kind of hm-hmm, then that’s not the chord you want. You want the lowered 7th.

Here’s G major. Let me move it down here. G major, G minor, G minor 7th. Again, we don’t want that. That would be a major 7th. It would be a minor chord with a major 7th which is also a chord but it’s not much used. So that’s what we want, G minor 7th.
Now D major is like that, isn’t it? D, F# and A. Again because of our rule of whole steps and half steps. To make that minor I lower the third a half step. Then I add the 7th degree, not the 7th degree but the lower 7th so that’s D minor. D minor is all white. I’m sorry, D minor 7th is all white. E minor 7th is also all white and A minor 7th is all white.

So let’s come back to E now. That’s an E major chord, E minor, E minor 7th. Now here’s A major, A minor, A minor 7th. Here’s D flat major, D flat minor, D flat minor 7th. E flat major, E flat minor, E flat minor 7th. Notice that’s all black. All the notes are black. All the keys are black in that chord. Notice too that it’s halfway between D minor 7th and E minor 7th so there’s a lot of possibilities to do like slide down by half steps.

Quite often when we improvise we improvise on the chord notes. For example, if improvising on D minor 7th. If you’re just starting to improvise, by the way, it’s a good idea to just start with chord notes like that in various rhythms and get the feeling of being loose and kind of fun. Then you can use some other scale notes. You don’t have to use just those notes but you want to kind of center your improvisation around them. In other words, I might take those three notes but I might slide off D flat. See that? Easy to do.

All right. We were on, let’s see, D flat, E flat. A flat now. A flat major. That’s the root, third and fifth of A flat major scale. We lower the third a half step. By the way that’s C flat. You can’t call it B, you’ve got to call it C flat. And then the 7th.
G flat major is all black as you know. We lower the third a half step, add the 7th so that’s G flat minor 7th or you could call it F# minor 7th chord. Same chord. It’s enharmonic. Here’s the B major chord, B minor, B minor 7th. B flat major, B flat minor, B flat minor 7th.

There’s tons of songs that use that chord. In fact, the theme of our little band that I was in when I was in high school and early college, junior college, was Moonglow and it starts out with that minor 7th. One of the first chords I learned was D minor 7th. I sent away for a chord chart when I was 14 or something like that, that I saw advertised called the Dean Ross Chord Chart, and the first chord I learned was C 6, then I learned D minor 7th so I could play, “Frankie and Johnny Were Sweethearts” and I was thrilled. I was off and running because I had learned two chords.

If you are getting started, then get excited about those chords, chords you love, and just take it one step at a time. It’s possible to get from here to there by mastering one thing at a time and it’s a lot of fun on the way. Piano playing is a lot of fun so I don’t see it as work at all. I see it as just fun exploration.

All right. We’ll see you there. Meanwhile if you haven’t signed up for our free piano tips at playpiano.com, please come over to playpiano.com and sign up for our free piano tips. They’re free piano tips and I think you’ll enjoy them. We’ll see you there.
Bye-bye for now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjXY9xFXJAM&feature=youtu.be
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