Beyond Cowboy Chords: Seventh Chords

If you know how to use the CAGED system to play triads across the fretboard (if you don't, watch this video!), you can use your knowledge to play four highly useful families of seventh chords in any key.

This basic vocabulary is essential knowledge for all guitarists!

Beyond cowboy chords: seventh chords

If you have already learned to play triads across the fretboard, seventh chords are the next most valuable set to add to your vocabulary. There are four main types and dozens of ways to play them, but some are more frequently useful than others. In this lesson, I’ll share the four families of voicings I use most often and show you how to modify CAGED chords you already know to create each of the four varieties of seventh chords in four different ways.

The voicings presented in this lesson are all played on the top four strings in standard tuning: DGBE. Why focus on learning the chords on these strings? In most band settings, there is a bass or keyboard player holding down the low end, which frees the guitarist up to play brighter and/or smaller voicings. These voicings contain each note of each chord exactly once. They’re also useful for quickly finding target notes while improvising!

The four voicing families in this lesson can all be visualized as modified CAGED chord grips.

You may notice that “A” is missing from this collection. This is because the A shape yields the same voicings as the G shape.

If these fingerings look familiar and you already know how to shift them up and down the fretboard, you have everything you need to jump in. If not, then first check out my Cowboy Chord Superpowers video and my overview of the CAGED system before proceeding.

The four types of seventh chords

There are four types of seventh chords that appear in music built from the major scale (and its modes). We can build one of these seventh chords by starting on any note of the major scale and including every second note until we’ve collected four total notes.

If we start on the first note of the C major scale, we will get C-E-G-B. In terms of intervals, that’s R-3-5-7, and because the seventh interval is major, we call this a major 7th or maj7 chord. If we start on the fourth scale degree, we get F-A-C-E, also a maj7 chord.

Starting on the fifth scale degree, we get G-B-D-F, which is R-3-5-♭7. A seventh chord with a major third and a flat seventh is called a dominant seventh or 7 chord. There’s only one of them in the major scale.

Starting on the second scale degree, we get D-F-A-C, which is R-♭3-5-♭7. A seventh chord with a minor third and a flat seventh is called a minor seventh or m7 chord. If we start on the third or sixth scale degree, we also get m7 chords.

Starting on the seventh scale degree, we get B-D-F-A, which is R-♭3-♭5-♭7. This combination of intervals is called a half-diminished chord (often represented with the ø symbol).

Here’s all of that in one table:

Summary of seventh chord construction.

The dominant seventh chord (7)

We’ll start by learning the dominant seventh chord voicings for two reasons. First, it’s the chord variety you will use most often in blues-based music. Second, I want you to memorize these four voicings. You’ll be able to easily create the other three types of seventh chords by modifying them.

These are the four shapes to memorize:

Notice that in each voicing, the root appears on a different string, and each note of the chord spelling (R-3-5-♭7) occurs exactly once. Focus on memorizing the overall shape of the chord and the location of the root.

You may have noticed that in the first voicing (the one based on the C shape), the third on the high E string has been moved up three frets to become a 5th. That makes the C-shaped voicings look slightly unfamiliar, but you’ll get used to it, I promise!

The other seventh chord types

For the other types of seventh chords, we’ll start from the dominant voicing and make adjustments:

To turn a 7 chord into a maj7 chord, raise the ♭7 one fret:

To turn a 7 chord into a m7 chord, lower the 3rd one fret:

To get a m7♭5, start with the m7 and lower the 5th by one fret, or start from the 7 chord and lower both the 3rd and 5th:

How to practice this

First, learn the four dominant seventh-chord voicings until you have them down cold. Here are a few ideas for doing this:

Exercise 1: Start with the dominant seventh voicing rooted on the high E string (the E shape). Go through the cycle of 4ths (B-E-A-D-G-C-F-B♭-E♭-A♭-D♭-G♭) and play that* *dominant seventh voicing in the correct location for each root. Repeat for B-string roots (C shape), then G-string roots (G shape), and finally D-string roots (D shape).

Exercise 2: Choose a five-fret span. Go through the cycle of 4ths. Find a root for each chord inside your five-fret span and build a dominant seventh chord there. Repeat for additional five-fret spans.

Once you feel comfortable with the dominant voicings, I recommend repeating the same exercises with m7 chords, followed by maj7 chords, and then, if you’re feeling jazzy, you can practice the m7♭5s. To test your knowledge:

Exercise 3: Practice harmonizing a major scale. Choose any key and one of the top four strings. Find the root of the scale on that string. Play the appropriate maj7 voicing there. Now work your way up or down the scale from there, keeping the root of each chord on the same string and playing the correct variety of voicing for each scale degree.

Exercise 4: Harmonizing the C-major scale in a 5-fret range. Pick a 5-fret range. Find a C note and play a maj7 based on that root location. Staying inside the 5-fret range, find a D note and play a m7 at that root location. Next play Em7, Fmaj7, G7, Am7, Bø, and then bring it home with Cmaj7.

Reference