Major 7th Guitar Chords
Major 7th chords are probably most known for their Jazzy sound. If you have never played any major 7th chords you will recognize this “Jazzy” quality as soon as you play your first one. In this guitar lesson you will have the opportunity to see how major 7th chords are made and learn two major 7th chord shapes.
If you know how major chords are made that is great, if you don’t you can take a guitar lesson on that here. Let’s make a G major 7th chord for an example. The G major scale is spelled G A B C D E F#. If you are familiar with major chords you already know that all you have to do is take the first, third and fifth note of any major scale to make a major chord. In this case we are making a G major chord so we would take the first, third and fifth notes of the G major scale to give us our notes in a G major chord. Those notes are G B and D.
Now all you have to do in order to make this G major chord into a G major 7th chord is add the seventh note in the G major scale to the notes in the G major chord. The seventh note in the G major scale is F#. Add that F# to the notes in the G major chord. Now you have G B D and F#. Those are the notes in a G major 7th chord.
It works that way for any major 7th chord. Just take the major scale of whatever major 7th chord you want to make and pick out the first, third, fifth and seventh note of that major scale. For example, if you wanted to make an A major 7th chord you would take the first, third, fifth and seventh notes of the A major scale and put them together. The A major scale is spelled A B C# D E F# G#. The first, third, fifth and seventh notes in the A major scale are A C# E G#. Those are the notes in an A major 7th chord.
Now that you know how a major 7th chord is made it is time to learn a couple of chord shapes. Take a look at the two major 7th chord diagrams below. Take note of the X’s above the diagrams. Make sure not to let these notes ring out or the chord will sound funny.
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