If you’ve read the previous blog posts, you would be familiar with triads and the roman numeral system for identifying six chords in major scales. But what about the seventh note in the scale and the corresponding chord? We had not touched upon it earlier as it was a bit advanced and an intermediate level topic, but we shall now delve into it.

In the C Major scale (with notes C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C), the seventh note as you can see is B. The chord on this note is referred to as B Diminished – quite a dark and melancholic chord. But a more commonly used version of seventh chords is the Major/Minor 7th. Let’s take the C Major chord and add the seventh note (B) to it. We get what is known as the C Major7, which has a nice jazzy feel to it.

There’s also a dominant seventh chord which is arrived at by flattening the B – that is moving your 5th finger half-step to the left. The dominant chord is usually played in the fifth position. In the C Major scale, that would be starting with G. Take the G Major chord (G, B, D) and add the seventh note (F) to play the dominant chord G7.

How do you apply what you’ve just learnt to a song? Suppose you’re ending the song with a C and arriving at it from F through G. Instead of playing the G, you could play the G7 which brings you closer home to the C.

There are minor sevenths as well. Let’s consider the Am chord. To play the seventh chord, just add the G note (root note minus one) to the Am chord to get Am7. Now practise the 1-5-6-4 progression that you’ve learnt previously, but substituting the Am7 for Am. This will help you better appreciate the use of the seventh chord.

In the upcoming blog post (which will be the final one in this series of learning to play the keyboard), you have an interesting exercise to look forward to. We’ll learn how to play the intro for the famous song “Let It Be” by The Beatles. Go ahead and check out the post to know what the chord progression is like.