Chords and scales
Improve your progressions with seventh chords
Dominant seventh chords
The chords that we have seen so far consist of the first, third and fifth notes of a scale, so naturally the next step is the seventh. A dominant seventh chord (shown
simply as ‘7’) is formed with the first, third, fifth, and flattened seventh notes of a scale. ‘B’ is the seventh note in the C major scale (CDEFGAB), so a C7 chord can
contain C, E, G, and Bb.
A7 B 7 B7
F#7 G7 A 7
E 7 E7 F7
C7 D 7 D7