Understanding Seventh Chords on the Guitar: The Complete Guide

11 min readApr 3, 2020

QUICK HIT: A guitar lesson focusing on understanding seventh chords and the music theory involved with understanding its chord structure.

What is a seventh chord? What about seventh chord guitar theory? Instead of just memorizing seventh chords and learning the finger patterns, we’re going to learn how to build them from the ground up, one note at a time. If you’re looking for info on a different topic, there are plenty of guitar concepts covered here that you can refer to.

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Seventh Chord Guitar Theory

I try to look for ways to understand music at a deeper level and connect the dots of the fretboard. That’s what we’ll do here with seventh chords. Instead of just memorizing seventh chords and learning finger placement, we’re going to learn how to build them by intervals.

This will help us connect all the dots.

We’ll walk through the process step by step, so that you’ll actually know seventh chords by the time we’re finished.

Background Information

To understand seventh chords you have to first understand the basic underpinnings of what a chord is and then what a triad is.

Formal Definition of a Chord
Formal Definition of a Triad

Once we’ve covered those two concepts, we can responsibly define and study seventh chords.

What is a Chord?

A chord is a combination of three or more notes, heard either simultaneously or in succession like an arpeggio. In contrast, Ottó Károlyi, a senior music professor at the University of Stirling, recognizes two or more notes as a musical chord.

Károlyi, Otto (1965). Introducing Music. Penguin Books. p. 63. “Two or more notes sounding simultaneously are known as a chord.”

I tend to favor Károlyi’s definition and hold that two notes or more should be considered a chord. However, both are valid explanations. Triads are the next and last thing we need to cover before getting into actual seventh chords.

What is a Triad?

Formally, a triad is a guitar chord made up of three notes which are successive third intervals.

But what does that mean?

Well, we’ve got three notes to work with. And we know that one of them, the lowest one, will be the root note. The next note will be a third (either major or minor) from the root note, while the last note will be a fifth (diminished, perfect or augmented).

For a more thorough explanation of this concept, checkout our article on triads, root positions, and inversions.

Thus, a triad includes:

A root note
Third interval (major or minor) from the root note
Fifth interval (diminished, perfect or augmented) from the root note

Take the following major triad example:

You’ve got your root, which in this case is easily identified as your lowest note. Then your major third which is four frets ahead of the root. If you were to start at the root note and count up the fretboard four frets, that note would match the one at the third fret on the second string.

For the perfect fifth, it’s seven frets (semitones) from the root note.

You can visualize the process by simply counting up from the root note on the same string.

You can see that the note occurring four frets up from our root note on the fourth fret is a C, which means we can use the C on the fifth string at the third fret to aid the construction of our triad. 20th Century theorists, Howard Hanson and Carlton Gamer, expanded the term “triad” to make room for essentially any group of three notes, or pitches, that are combined for a consonant chord.

Though it’s true that Hanson and Gamer’s definition is valid and easier to digest, we need to at least be aware of the formal definition of a triad in order to understand the structure of seventh chords. Now that we’ve covered the basic definition of a chord and the structure of a triad, we can finally delve into seventh chords.

Defining Seventh Chords

A seventh chord consists of a triad plus one more note that forms a seventh interval with that triad’s root note. If you understand how our triads are constructed it will be fairly easy for you to construct a seventh chord as well. Since you’re just adding a note to an established triad, understanding seventh chords becomes a simple matter of being able to count intervals.

Take the following seventh chord for example:

You’ve got a root note, a major third, perfect fifth and a major seventh that come together to form a basic major seventh chord. We got there entirely by counting intervals from the root note. If you’re still feeling a little tepid about intervals, here are a few resources you can check out to refresh your memory or get some more clarity before moving on.

Additionally, you can refer to this chart if you need help counting from the root note. For example, if you know you need to add a “major third” you can look at the chart and see that a major third is four frets from the root.

Now up to this point we’ve only used major triads for our examples. There are five other common or “Tertian” seventh chords that we’ll cover as well.

Major Seventh
Minor Seventh
Dominant Seventh
Diminished Seventh
Half-Diminished Seventh

The process is the same for each type of chord. We’ll build our chords starting with a root note, then add a third, fifth and seventh interval.

Now that we know all the elements of a seventh chord, we can go through all five of our common names and see if we can make sense of their structure.

1. Major Seventh

We’ve already used the major seventh as an example, but we’ll cover another one here just to be thorough. Remember, all we need to start is one triad. We’ll look for something different than what was used in the previous example. Try this major triad shape:

By now it should be fairly easy for you to spot the root note, third interval and fifth interval in our triad. Remember, it’s still a major chord, so our intervals will have the following qualities:

Major Third — Perfect Fifth — Major Seventh

If you memorize this, you can create a major seventh chord with any root note of your choice. All you’ve got to do is add the major seventh interval. Remember that a major seventh interval is 11 semitones from the root note (per our interval diagram). We can simply count from the root note on the fourth string at the fifth fret, all the way up the fretboard.

If you do that you’ll go from the fifth fret to the 16th fret.

That means we’re looking for an F# near our original chord. The first note that comes to mind might be the low F# on the sixth string, but that’s not a functional option. However, the F# on the high E string is in perfect position to complete our major seventh chord.

You can apply the same process to any other triad to make it a major seventh chord.

2. Minor Seventh

All of the same principles will apply to the minor seventh chord, where the only difference is that third and seventh intervals will be minor in their relation to the root note. Here are the intervals we need to use.

Minor Third — Perfect Fifth — Minor Seventh

We now have our root note on the sixth string at the fifth fret, meaning our chord is going to be an Amin7 by the time we’re finished. Our first interval is a minor third which is three semitones from the root. The perfect fifth interval is the same as before, now falling on the second string at the seventh fret.

In order to add our minor seventh interval, we need to count ten frets up from the root note. This gives us a G, which we can include in our chord with the G note at the eighth fret on the second string.

3. Dominant Seventh

A dominant seventh chord will be composed of a root, plus the following intervals:

Major Third — Perfect Fifth — Minor Seventh

Let’s start with an E at the seventh fret on the fifth string.

Our major third and perfect fifth should be easy by now, leading us to the following shape:

Now we need to add our minor seventh, which will be a D note considering our root E.

The seven, on the third string, is our D note, completing the dominant seventh chord.

4. Diminished Seventh

Figuring out the diminished seventh will be slightly trickier because you’ll have two diminished intervals to deal with.

Minor Third — Diminished Fifth — Diminished Seventh

Our diminished fifth (also know as a Tritone), is going to be six semitones from the root note or one less than what we were becoming accustomed to with the perfect fifth.

The sound it creates is considered “dissonant.”

In order to add our diminished seventh note, we’ll need to go nine semitones above the root note, which in this case is A. 10 semitones would get us to G, so one less will be F#.

5. Half-Diminished Seventh

The half diminished seventh requires the following three intervals from the root:

Minor Third — Diminished Fifth — Minor Seventh

This chord will actually be a bit easier to understand than the diminished seventh, since we have two minor intervals instead of two diminished intervals.

We’ll start with our root note here:

Remember that a diminished fifth is six semitones above the root.

Now we can add our minor third and seventh intervals.

The same principles can be applied to the minor major seventh chord and the augmented major seventh chord, which are not listed here, but are still considered Tertian. As long as you know the intervals, you’re good to go.

Major Seventh: Major Third — Perfect Fifth — Major Seventh
Minor Seventh: Minor Third — Perfect Fifth — Minor Seventh
Dominant: Major Third — Perfect Fifth — Minor Seventh
Diminished: Minor Third — Diminished Fifth — Diminished Seventh
Half-diminished: Minor Third — Diminished Fifth — Minor Seventh
Minor Major Seventh: Minor Third — Perfect Fifth — Major Seventh
Augmented Major: Major Fifth — Augmented Fifth — Major Seventh

If you know the intervals you can discern and build your own chords pretty quickly. Instead of looking up a bunch of seventh guitar chords and simply memorizing, you can make them from scratch. In that system, you know why every single note in these chords exists, because you know the four components that make up a seventh chord.

Let’s go ahead and review those components:

Root
Third Interval
Fifth Interval
Seventh Interval

It’s not easy, at least not for the average music student. But most things worth learning, like music theory, aren’t easy.

The Process

To review and summarize what we’ve covered, let’s look at the process by which we’ve gotten to this point.

Understand the basic definition of a chord.
Understand the definition and formal components of a triad (root, third and fifth interval).
Learn how to count intervals from the root notes (by the number of semitones — use the chart provided).
Build your seventh chords by finding a root note and adding the appropriate intervals depending on the commons name (major, minor, diminished, etc.) of the chord you want.

Easier said than done, but it’s all there. And once you learn it, you’ll be ahead of most who just rely on raw memorization.

A Brief Argument for Music Theory

Most people don’t like the idea of learning a lot of music theory.

It’s boring, time consuming and looms large for a lot of people who “just want to play.” If you do just want to play a little, that’s fine.

But this type of material can still help those who want the numerous benefits that an in-depth understanding of music theory has to offer guitar players. It gives structure and definition to what you see happening on the fretboard so that you always know why you’re playing what you’re playing.

Following Up

Do you have thoughts about the material?

Possible questions? Feel free to hit the comments section below.