Dominant Seventh Chords

Dominant Seventh Chords - Theory And Practice

This article is going to discuss the dominant 7th chords, usually just abbreviated to 7, e.g. E7 and A7. Don't confuse the dominant 7th chord with the major seventh chord. The major 7th chords,or maj7, are a different chord.

Unlike the Major Chord and Minor Chord lessons where I just showed you the chord shapes and fingerings, I'm going to show you a little music theory, major scale theory, chord formula, and learn how to play dominant 7th chords.

First off, I'm going to show you what the major scale looks like. Starting off at the root note and going up to the same note one octave higher, it goes:

whole-whole-half-whole-whole-whole-half

Where whole is a whole tone, or two frets on the guitar, and half is one fret.

If we take the E Major scale, the root note is the open sixth string. The diagram below shows the notes on the sixth string of the guitar.

Notes On The Sixth String

Counting up the fretboard, the notes of the E Major scale are E F# G# A B C# D# and E.

The Major chord uses the first, third, and fifth notes of the Major scale. The E Major chord consists of E, G#, and B. The diagram below shows the E Major chord. Starting from the sixth string, the notes played are E, B, E, G#, B, and E.

E Major Chord

The 7th chord formula is the first, third, fifth, and flatted seventh notes of the Major scale. E7 consists of E, G#, B, and D. The first version of E7 below uses all four fingers and can't be used as a bar chord. The notes are E, B, E, G#, D, and E.

E7 Chord

The next version of E7 below only uses three finger and can be used as a bar chord further up the neck of the guitar. The notes are E, B, D, G#, D, and E.

E7 Chord

This last version of E7 is even easier and uses only two fingers. The notes are E, B, D, G#, B, and E.

E7 Chord

You should see now that there are different ways of playing the same chord. As long as the four notes E, G#, B, and D are played, it's an E7 chord.

We're now going to take three variations of E7 and move it up the fretboard to play a G7 chord. Remember that we can't use the first version because it uses all four fingers and doesn't leave the first finger free to form the bar.

Using the same principle as before, the notes of the G Major scale are G, A, B, C, D, E, F#, G. The first, third, fifth, and flatted seventh notes forming the G7 chord are G, B, D, and F.

The  diagram below shows the second version of E7 moved up to the 3rd fret to form G7. The notes are G, D, F, B, F, and G.

G7 Chord

Finally, the diagram below shows the easy two finger version of E7 moved up to the 3rd fret to give G7. The notes are G, D, F, B, D, and G.

G7 Chord

If either of these two chord shapes are moved up to the fifth fret, we have an A7 chord, Move it up to the seventh fret, we have a B7 chord, and so on.

Learn How To Play Guitar Chords

How To Learn Guitar Chords Easily

If all you want is diagrams, either buy a chordbook or go to this website:

http://www.all-guitar-chords.com

This website will show you more than you will ever need to know or use.

There are many different chord types. Some common types are:

• Major
• Minor
• Major 7th
• Minor 7th
• Dominant 7th

Some less common ones are:

• Major 9th
• Minor 9th
• Dominant 9th

And even less common are 11th and 13th chords. There are a whole lot more weird and wonderful sounding chords.

On top of all those different types, they all need to be learned in A, B, C, D, E, F, and G.

The good news is that you don’t have to learn a ridiculous number of different chord patterns. And you don’t even need to learn about chord theory and guitar scales if you don’t want to.

Just to give you a little theory, the Major guitar chord is made up from the first, third, and fifth notes of the Major scale. The C Major chord would then use the C, E, and G notes.

While this is useful to know, it doesn’t help you to quickly learn how to play chords on your guitar.

I’m going to go into this in a lot more detail later with pictures and fingerings, but what you basically do is learn one or two different chord shapes and then learn how to play them on different positions on the fretboard.

Take a look at the website I mentioned earlier and look at the E Major chord. The root note of this is on the sixth string. The open E string is the root note of the chord you are playing. Move this chord up the neck of the guitar and place the first finger across the strings at the third fret to form a bar and you are now playing a G Major chord. You can go this any where on the neck.

One final example is the A Major chord. Look at it on the website. The root note is on fifth string this time. Place the first finger bar across the strings at the third fret and play the same chord. You now have a C Major chord and again you can do this any where on the neck of the guitar.

You now should realise that you can play any Major chord on your guitar from two basic Major chord patterns by knowing the notes on the fifth and sixth strings. As I said earlier, I will go into more detail later with diagrams and how to play these chords easily.

The Minor chord is only one note different to the major one. It's very easy to convert the Major patterns to Minor ones. Again, it can be moved to any position on the fretboard to play any Minor chord.

By mastering these techniques while you are learning how to play guitar, you will become a much better guitarist.