Chords - Scott BL's only talks about 7ths?

[MalcolmAmos]

Back to the basics. A triad has three notes. This is the beginning of the chord story. It's when we fill out the chord by adding the 7th note we produce a "fuller" sound.

Then it's the ole question, which 7th do we add?

The guys have already given several examples of what 7 can be used and what results come from it's placement.

Lot of country and blues will just add the dominant 7 (C7) and leave it at that. If you are playing country or blues just play what's written on your sheet music.

If you have a Cm7b5 chord read from the left to the right and get as many notes as you can before the music goes off and leaves you ---- works where I play.

 

[SteveCS]

@Robsco This is worth dwelling on.

There's also a great quote that I've heard attributed to Sting: "The guitarist can try to play a C major chord all he wants, but if I decide to play an A, suddenly he's playing an Am7."

Chords are generally built on stacked thirds - major and/or minor. I would recommend using your looper to record sequences of thirds in a higher register, then exploring how different bass notes underneath them change the quality and dynamics of he resultant chord. For example, say you have the diad E and G playing together. Add a C and you have C Major. Go to B and you have Em. Put the D above and you start implying Em7. Move it below and you are into sus2/4 or 9/13 territory. Drop to C# or Bb to go diminished. And that's just from one diad.

 

[markjsmithbass]

Just to clarify. I've covered both Triads and Seventh Chords (and everything else) online but I start with triads and then move progressively into more and more complex chords. It's really easy to get a pretty encyclopaedic knowledge of most common chord structures by just understanding the basics of Tertian harmony. This simply means we're looking at building chords from stacked thirds. You can also have quartal harmony, quintal harmony and anything else you want but Tertian harmony is the basis of most Western music.

Now think of the common thirds we use: Major and Minor. If we look at every combination of two major and minor 3rds, we find four 3 note chords. Major+Minor, Minor+Major, Minor+Minor, Major+Major. Those chords are the Major, Minor, Diminished and Augmented Triads.

You then just move on to adding another major or minor 3rd on top of each triad giving us a 4 note chord (seventh chord). Add another and we get a 9th then an 11th and finally a 13th. You could conceivably use all the different permutations of thirds at every stage but past the 7th we just add a major or perfect interval as default and indicate any alterations with sharp/flat signs.

That's the basis of everything from triads to 13th chords but don't forget Added Note Chords (add9, 6, 6/9). These are additions to the triad, not extensions (extended chords are built from adding those notes to a seventh chord).

Put inversions and suspensions (sus4, 7sus4, sus2 etc.) into the mix and you've got most chords you're likely to see as chord symbols. Obviously you could go far beyond chord symbols by looking at more contemporary classical structures from clusters all the way through to large harmonic projections and serial chords. It would be hard to present those in a pop/jazz lead sheet!

I know Scott addresses seventh chords before triads in the chords course because triads are actually harder to play. Seventh chords voiced as root, 3rd, 7th are probably the easiest chord voicings and a good way to get into them. In terms of learning harmony, I'd probably always cover triads first just to get that tertian point across. Once you can stack two thirds, it's easy to see the system.