The "Mellow Chord" - Minor 7th Chords

Minor 7th Chords – Root, flat 3rd, 5th, flat 7th

Duane:	Here is a printed transcript of the audio on the video for your convenience: Good morning, this is Duane. Â Today we are going to look at the most mellow of chords – the minor 7th chord. Yesterday we took up dominant 7th chords, and we said a dominant 7th chord includes the root, 3rd, 5th, and the lowered 7th, the flatted 7th of a major scale. In C, here’s the major scale for C, based on the formula whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step. If I started on B, it would be whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step, so the B scale would be like that, wouldn’t it? If I took the root 3rd and 5th of the B scale, it would be B, D sharp, and F sharp. Let’s come back to the key of C, it’s easier to see. If we had the 7th [degree 00:00:45] to the scale, we have that, but that’s not what we covered yesterday. The dominant 7th chord is called that. In other words, if you see C 7th as a notation in sheet music, it’ll mean to play that, the dominate 7th.
	Today we’re going to do the same thing, we’re going to use those same 4 notes, except, we’re going to lower the 3rd a half step. Instead of E, we’ll hit E flat on the C chord. In other words, we’re just changing a major chord to a minor chord, but we’re keeping the 7th, same 7th, not the 7th degree to the scale, but the flatted 7th. You notice that’s a minor 7th chord. Those are very mellow chords, aren’t they? Very, very mellow, I think probably the most mellow of all chords. Yesterday we said the dominant chord was pregnant, it wanted to move somewhere, but this is very stable, you can just sit on that for quite a while, and it doesn’t really want to move, maybe a little bit, but not much. It’s a mellow, mellow, wonderful, harmonious chord.
	Let’s go through the 12 major chords and make them all into minor 7ths now. That’s C major, C minor, C minor 7th. D flat major, D flat minor, D flat minor 7th. D major, D minor, D minor 7th. E flat major, E flat minor, E flat minor 7th. E major, E minor, E minor 7th. F major, F minor, F minor 7th. F sharp major or a G flat major, that’s a [inner 00:02:40] harmonic note so it could be either. We’ll call it G flat major, G flat minor, G flat minor 7th. G major, G minor, G minor 7th. A flat major, A flat minor, A flat minor 7th. Let me lower it a little bit. A major, A minor, A minor 7th. B flat major, B flat minor, B flat minor 7th. B major, B minor, B minor 7th. That’s it, we’re back to C minor 7th, aren’t we? Get familiar with those minor 7th chords, of course in both hands.
	In addition to playing it as a block chord like that, or you can play it … you can get a whole big sound if you play it like that, but get used to playing on your left hand, also get used to arpeggiating it, in other words, break it up like so. If you’re more of a beginner, you can just break up the notes to the chord like that. You can go up and down the chord if you want.
	That’s it for today, the minor 7th chord, so we’ll see you tomorrow with another little tip like this. If you’re not signed up for our series of tips, be sure and do that. Come on over to playpiano.com and sign up so you don’t miss any of this. Thanks for being with me, and we’ll see you again tomorrow. Bye-bye for now.