Introduction to the Minor Seventh Chord

In this lesson, I'm going to introduce the minor seventh chord, which is another staple of the jazz repertoire and obviously deals with the minor tonality.

G Major Modification

In G major, to make it sound minor, I'm going to change my third:

• Instead of B natural (my major third), I'm going to flatten that by a semitone, like I've done in the blues before.

To build a chord of G minor, we can do exactly the same thing as we've done with major chords: root, third, fifth.

Adding the Seventh

Since we're playing jazz, we're going to put the seventh on as well.

• Our chord tones of a G major 7 chord would be:
  • G
  • B
  • D
  • F sharp

Changing to A Minor 7 Chord

To change to an A minor 7 chord, I need to change two notes:

1. The third: For it to qualify as minor, it must have a B flat.

   • So it will sound like this:

   "A minor major seven chord."

It's a kind of hybrid, I guess. It's got a minor third, but a major seven.

• Against the piano, it will sound like this. You hear that chord a lot in suspense films; it has a very unique character of its own.

Flattening the Seventh

To make a minor seventh for jazz, I also want to flatten my seventh:

• My F sharp is going to become an F natural.

• So against the piano chord, it'll sound like this.

Scale Components

In exactly the same way as major chords, I have chord tones:

• Root
• Third
• Fifth
• Seventh
• And in between, passing tones:
  • A second (which is A in this case)
  • A fourth (which is C in this case)
  • A sixth (which is E natural in this case)

The Dorian Mode

The whole scale is going to sound like this.

• This scale I've ended up with is a variation on a minor scale called A mode, specifically Dorian mode.

You might have learned about harmonic minor scales and melodic minor scales. All these will come up in jazz.

However, for this example and for static minor seven chords, I'm going to play this Dorian scale, which again sounds like this.