Chords 3

Seventh chords and The Harmonized Major and Minor Scales

This section should be much shorter than other lessons because most of what we need to know we have already gone over.

In the previous section we learned that we can find the triads that harmonize scales by playing every other note of the scale starting on the first note, and then start on the second note, and then start on the third note… and so on. By using the exact same method, we can also find all of the seventh chords that harmonize the major and natural minor scales. The only difference is that you play every note for four notes instead of three to get the four note seventh chords. The major scale will yield the following list of chord structures 

  1. I       Major 7th
  2. II     Minor 7th 
  3. III    Minor 7th 
  4. IV    Major 7th 
  5.  V     Dominant 7th 
  6. VI     Minor 7th 
  7. VII   Half Diminished 7th  (min 7th ♭ 5)

And the natural minor scale will yield the following results

  1. I         Minor 7th  
  2. II       Half Diminished 7th  (min 7th ♭ 5)
  3. III     Major 7th
  4. IV      Minor 7th
  5. V        Minor 7th
  6. VI      Major 7th 
  7. VII    Dominant 7th

There are three other minor scales that you will need to know about.

  1.  Harmonic Minor. This scale is made by raising the seventh tone of the natural minor scale by a half step.
  2. Melodic Minor. This scale is made by raising both the sixth and seventh tone of the natural minor scale by a half step when ascending however the natural minor scale is used when descending. 
  3. Jazz Minor ( also called the Minor-Major scale). This scale is the ascending portion of the melodic minor scale. It has the same tones as its parallel major scale but with a flat third which would make its one chord a Minor-Major chord. Scales and modes are often named for the structure of their one chord. 

These three scales were created to solve problems that sometimes occur when you try to harmonize certain types of chord progressions with the natural minor scale. All of these scales are considered to be alterations of the natural minor scale (although sometimes they are described by comparing them to their parallel major scale). They share the same key signature as their parallel natural minor which of course gets its key signature from its relative major. Parallel scales are scales that have different step patterns but share the same root (or tonic). For example: C-Minor is the parallel minor of C-Major because they share the same tonic note (C). The tonic is the first degree of a scale and the note for which the scale is named. It is usually indicated by the roman numeral (I). There are seven named scale degrees in every Major and Minor scale. Their position and therefore function within a scale are the basis for why other minor scales needed to be created to make them fit some chord progressions. The names of all seven scale degrees are:

  1. I-TONIC
  2. II-SUPERTONIC
  3. III-MEDIANT
  4. IV-SUBDOMINANT
  5. V-DOMINANT
  6. VI-SUBMEDIANT
  7. VII-LEADING TONE

 More will be discussed about scale degrees when we get into chord progressions in the next section. We will discuss the meanings of their names and the importance of those meanings when constructing chord progressions.

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