Plus, some essential listening recommendations!.Actionable tips for reading chord charts in the moment.What chord extensions are and how to use them.Unique sounding, rarer 7th chord qualities.The basic types of 7th chords most commonly found in jazz.This guide will give you everything you need to know to understand 7th chords in theory and on the stage. To speak the language of jazz and perform jazz with other musicians, you’ll need to understand how 7th chords work, how you can play them (or over them), and how to comprehend them on a chord chart. Today, 7th chords are the basic building blocks of jazz harmony. It would take a few centuries before our ears could embrace the dissonance of a B7#5 chord lasting for several bars of music, like in Wayne Shorter’s Juju. If you look hard enough, you can find examples of incidental 7th chords as far back as Renaissance music.īut, generally, 7th chords were too dissonant to use for more than just a passing moment.

Though present in popular music today and certainly present in jazz, it took the musical world a bit of time to warm up to the idea of 7th chords. The Ultimate Guide to 7th Chords (and Beyond)

Dominant seventh in g flat major