Category: Seventh Chords

  • Dominant Seventh Chords

    Pythagoras 6th century B.C. Fable of the Blacksmith Hammers Harmony of the Spheres Relation of the proportion of heavenly bodies Planet “hums” based on orbital rotation Overtones Fundamental – Base sounding tone Overtone – sympathetic vibrations Harmonics – overtones whose frequencies are whole number ratios with the fundamental The presence or absence of certain overtones…

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  • Intro to the ii-V-I

    Diatonic Seventh Chords in Major Check your understanding of the following chart. You should be able to identify seventh chords by their theoretical name (major-minor seventh) and by their common name (dominant seventh). Diatonic Seventh Chords in Harmonic Minor Look over the same chart in the parallel harmonic minor. Notice that the quality of the…

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  • Secondary Function

    Secondary Leading Tone The most unique triad in the major key is the diminished leading tone triad. Since it is the only diminished triad in major and because it contains the tritone, it is the chord that most effectively allows you to hear the tonic. By constructing a leading tone triad before any major or…

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  • Diatonic Chord Orbits

    I’ve been playing around with circle diagrams. We are titling the following chart “Diatonic Chord Orbits”: It is a nice way to demonstrate the relationships and shared tones between dominant and leading tone sevenths with other diatonic chords. Note that the inner circle contains only primary chords and that all the major scale tones are…

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  • Seventh Chords

    Common Seventh Chords Seventh chords are named by the quality of the triad and the quality from the root to the seventh. Major-major seventh MM7 Major triad + major seventh Major-minor seventh Mm7 Major triad + minor seventh Minor-minor seventh mm7 Minor triad + minor seventh Minor-major seventh mM7 Minor triad + major seventh Other…

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  • Part Writing with Dominant and Leading Tone Sevenths

    Review Seventh Chords Review the fundamentals of seventh chords. Make sure you understand qualities, naming conventions, and inversions. Structure of Dominant Sevenths Dominant Seventh chords are major-minor type seventh chords (Mm7). In a major key, the only diatonic occurrence of a Mm7 is on the 5th scale degree, hence the name ‘dominant’ seventh. Another way…

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