Attempt Pianote FREE for 30-Days: and think about subscribing to their YouTube channel:.
My video on EVERY chord sign:.
My video on Line Cliché chord developments:.
The outro music to this video is my track "Mothers Day" which you can hear completely on Spotify:.
And, an extra unique thanks goes to Peter Keller, Douglas Lind, Vidad Flowers, Ivan Pang, Waylon Fairbanks, Jon Dye, Austin Russell, Christopher Ryan, Toot & Paul Peijzel, the channel's Patreon saints!.
ASSISTANCE ME ON PATREON:.
0:00 Introduction.
0:37 Dominant 7th chord.
3:46 Significant 7th chord.
5:17 Minor 7th chord.
6:37 Pianote.
7:27 Minor Major 7th chord.
9:50 Decreased 7th chord.
11:31 Genuine book chord symbols.
12:06 Half-diminished 7th chord.
14:31 Variations.
15:38 Conclusion.
16:33 Patreon.
Click Here To Learn Piano or Keyboard
Try Pianote FREE for 30-Days: https://www.pianote.com/affiliate/davidbennett 🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹🎹
Thanx David, I knew the 1st six anyway. Great to learn from You.
Agree
Whenever I’m this early I like to remind everyone that this is the best music theory channel on YouTube, thorough, clear, and super stylistic. Couldn’t be any better!
open studio jazz is really good too
Just wait. He’s only getting started.
8 bit music theory too
If you restrict that to mostly harmonic theory for pop songwriting, I’d agree. If someone wants to learn about microtonal jazz, or maqam, or Indian classical music, etc, there are other options. There isn’t much here that’s specific to hip-hop, or trap rhythms and so on. OTOH, that allows some space for expansion.
The connection with Pianote kinda shows the pop connection. If someone wanted to focus on jazz or classical or gospel, and so on, they might choose another place, but for pop songs, that seems to be Pianote’s big thing.
this is really helpful, i’ve been playing piano for many years and only with this video realized that i’ve been calling major sevenths dominant sevenths and vice versa. great video!
Welcome to Canada, David! Lovely summary of the different types of 7th chords. Interesting how simply moving one note by one interval can change the whole “feeI” of a chord. Thought for sure you’d sneak in a few extensions to 7th chords as well, like the Hendrix chord (dom7th #9). 😉
Thanks! Canada is a lovely country! And don’t worry, the Hendrix chord is coming in a future episode!
The setting has changed, and improved, but the quality remains the same. Good for you, David. You have earned and richly deserve the recognition which this video reflects.
Thank you 😊
@David Bennett Piano i must mention the audio is out of sync throughout the video. A clapper board could be handy for recordings like this
@Zsolt Bocsionly the distant camera was out of sync, which is pretty forgivable
I always learn something from David’s vids. It’s great to see him colab’ with Pianote. 🙂
Thank you 😊
I never knew how the 6th note in a scale could be considered a seventh, until you showed how the diminished fifth changes from where it was to where it goes which drags the 7th down along with it. Made perfect sense when I watched you do that part. Thanks so much!
I’m surprised he didn’t mention that the diminished 7th chord has a double flat 7th or bb7, which is still equivalent to a major 6th enharmonically. He kind of did in a simple way though.
@Randy Bakkelund Thank you! That makes perfect sense when put that way. 🤔
Well, it does not. In the case of any C scale, the proper name note names of a Cdim7 chords are : C Eb, Gb, Bbb (That’s B double-flat). For the same reason that you can’t call the diminished 5th « F# » instead of Gb. (That would be a sharp 4th, and make no sense from a theory point of view). Hope this helps.
Aurgh! That is the part where I get lost! I think I understand the rule that makes a diminished triad. But, how on earth does applying certain chord rules to the scale
“So, instead of just adding the diminished 7th, you have to do THIS, and then THAT!… See?😊”
NO! I DIDN’T!
HELP!
Thank you!
@JeffMountainPicker It doesn’t change the scale. Some of the 7th chords are from outside of the scale. There’s an alphabetical rule that any 7th chord in C will have to be C with some sort of E (E-flat or E-natural, usually) and some sort of G (G-natural, G-flat, whatever) and some sort of B (B-natural, B-flat, or B-double-flat). So while B-double-flat looks the same as A on a piano, really the proper spelling of it in that diminished 7th chord is B-double-flat due to that rule.
One thing I notice in my recently arrived song book by The Who is that Pete Townshend really loved playing with chords. In “Our Love Was, Is” it starts with a downward progression and then starts plays with mood chords from that. He was young at the time and becoming stronger as a songwriter. I found out that The Who Sell Out was the first album he began composing songs on piano.
Thank you SO much for the clearest exposition on why these chords are named the way they are.
I’m glad it was helpful 😊
Awesome video! Something really nice to do and understand these chords, is to think that every 7th chord have 2 triads.
Dominant 7: C E G Bb (E with a 5b [E to Bb is a tritone])
Major 7th: C E G B; have an Em triad in it. That’s why the Maj7 chords are so emotional yet melancholic
Minor 7th: C Eb G Bb; have an Eb major chord inside. That’s why the Minor 7th chords are kinda sad but insipirationals and bright at the same time.
Minor maj7: C Eb G B; have an Eb(#5), thats why the minor maj7 sounds so tense but with an additional flavour
Dim7: C Eb Gb Bbb; the chord is simmetrical, every note is 1,5 tones away from each other. Thats why the resolutions and the chord itself sounds so tense.
Half diminished: C Eb Gb Bb; the chord have a really tense taste, like the dim7. But the chord is not that strong as the full diminished, because of the minor 7, instead of a diminished 7.
Something great too is to think the half diminished as a sub mediant chord, because they are tense but not THAT tense, so can cause move in the chord progression. The half diminished can used like a dominant chord
Minor major 7th chords have an augmented chord inside them (Eb G B). That’s why it feels unstable yet upwardly mobile.
That’s fun, categorizing it like that. You could come up with a whole musical divination system this way, even draw tarot-esque cards for the different archetypes found in each chord… perhaps for the basic chords, even multiple cards (archetypes), context dependant. I’ll have to whiteboard this like I was trying to track a serial killer. What a splendid idea. I hope I don’t forget by morning, but I don’t see how. Of course, I never do, at the time. Thanks for the insight.
Another great example of the use of the Major 7th is Simon and Garfunkel’s song “Old Friends” (which may have been inspired by Satie). And a further variation on the main seven types is D7(#9), which you’ll recognise from the Beatles’ song “You Can’t Do That”.
Yeah great example! 😊😊
Everytime you hit the seventh note of the chords I got chills down my spine
Just wanted to comment that I’ve been playing music nearly by whole life. I love music theory just as much as honing the skills to play. These videos are possibly my favorites on youtube. I love the real life examples of chord progressions and the explanation of why something is the way it is. I havent commented before so it was high time I do that and say thank you for the supplemental vids!
Thank you! That means a lot 😊
I do have a question. Is there any material (im sure there is) on how to begin analyzing songs? It’s one thing to be told whats in a song, what key its in, chord structure etc.
But for instance lets say theres a song I want to analyze. I have the song, im listening to it and im ready with a blank sheet of paper and pencil in hand aaaaand where does one go from there?
How does a person begin the analysis?
Hope that makes sense. Just wanted to get some direction on how to attack the song.
@David Bennett Piano
Great video! Bummed you didn’t mention Major7 #5 because it’s such a strange sounding chord and I’d love to know more about how it’s often used
I quite like the major 7 with a flat five. Just tried #5 and that’s pretty strange too. Nice one!
Another great video – thank you! One thing that interested me when I was getting into theory was the interval between the 3rd and the 7th in Dominant 7th. It’s a half step short of a 5th which gives it a very unstable and mysterious feel.
I have been watching your channel for a little over a year now and I just want to say thank you. Your videos have helped me grasp music theory in a much more tangible and useful way than any other channel that I know of. Keep up the good work! Cheers!
Thanks!
I wonder why you didn’t mention min 7 b5 naturally accruing in the major scale as well? I know that everyone learns different, but I remember it being really useful to me when learning relative minor scales and realizing that they are the same thing but you place your tonic in a different spot. I find it useful to teach major scales and all the chords that go along with each degree of the scale, and then concreting that finding the relative minor as soon as the student understands that because it really is so useful to know. Anyway, just a thought. Thanks again for making such helpful content!
Thanks David, high quality lesson as usual! I suggested a video about the different 7th chords when you recently asked for suggestions. So glad that you listened! 😇
I’m a guitar player but have enjoyed your videos to learn theory. Appreciated the improved production value of this vid. David, you do such a good job explaining the sometimes complex world of music so I can understand. Thanks!
David, this video is so good! It was great to have an amazing music theorist like yourself at our studio. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us🙌🏼