Why Do Some Beginning Piano Books Use Three Note 7th Chords?

Click on this link to watch this video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmjgt_q6uV4&feature=youtu.be

Today we will cover Three Note 7th Chords and why they appear in beginning piano books.

Good morning, this is Duane. I had a student ask me a very interesting and good question. He had noticed that in instruction books, piano instruction books, seventh chords often just have three notes. He knew that seventh chords really had four notes so he was asking me why. Why that was the case.

The answer is it makes it easier for beginners to play. Usually you start out in a instruction book learning a C chord (Duane demonstrating on piano) and the F chord like that, in inversion. See, that’s easier to move from the C chord to the F chord then it is to go C F. Isn’t it? You just move the top two notes up and you leave the bottom one where it is. The three primary chords in the key of C, of course, are C, F, and G7. In a G7 instead of playing it like this (demonstrating) - Which is hard for a beginner to play because you’ve got four notes to deal with, they do this. They use that for G7. You have G and F and B. Now, where’s the other note of a chord?

Well, seventh chords are made out of  the root, the third, the fifth, and the seventh. The fifth is left out, isn’t it? We’re leaving the fifth out of the chord. It’s okay, because you still get the same idea don’t you? The human ear kind of implies the fifth, the presence of the fifth when you play the root third and seven. Let me put it this way, if you played a G seventh chord and you left out the root, what would you have? You don’t know where the root is, you need the root to establish what the chord sounds like. Otherwise that sounds like B diminish, doesn’t it? You needed that root.

You also needed a third, because if you don’t have a major third, your mind could very well imply the minor third. You need to include that. Of course, you need a seventh,  otherwise you don’t have seventh chord. Right? The only logical note to leave out is that fifth note.

That’s the answer to that question. I thought that was very insightful of the student to ask that. Why do some four note chords only have three notes, and that’s the reason for that.

That’s it for today, and tomorrow we’ll take up another subject like that. Hope to see you over at playpiano.com where you can sign up for all these free videos, so hope to see you there. Bye-Bye for now.

***For lots more good stuff on piano playing come on over to my website at https://www.playpiano.com and sign up for our free piano tips – “Exciting Piano Chords & Sizzling Chord Progressions!”

Here’s a great little book on chords and chord progressions on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Piano-Chords-Chord-Progressions-Exciting-ebook/dp/B0076OUGDE/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404158669&sr=1-1&keywords=piano+chords+duane+shinn

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