Sevenths and Seconds

Let's play our C major seventh chord. Click here to listen. Let's look at the relationship between the C and the B. That interval is called a seventh. If you count, you'll see that there are seven notes between the C and the B. Sevenths come in 2 types. Major sevenths and minor sevenths. The distance between C and B is a major seventh. Click here to listen to C going to B and B going to C.

The next interval is the minor second. If you invert a major seventh, you're going to get a minor second. Click here to listen to B going to C and C going to B. The minor second is the shortest distance between 2 notes. It is the smallest interval. Another name for the minor second is a semitone, or a half step. In the major scale, there are two place where a minor second happens naturally. The first is b going to c, and the second is e going to f.

Now minor seconds are easy to sing and occur in many pieces of music. Major sevenths are hard to sing, cause the distance of a seventh and are sometimes though of as dissonant. So, there are few popular melodies that incorporate the interval of a major seventh. However, when creating a melody there are many melodies based around the major seventh chord. Click here to listen to this example.

In addition to the above intervals we have an additional 5th between the E and the B. Click here to listen to the E going to B. And like any fifth, we can invert it to get a fourth. Click here to listen to the 4th.

Now, let's play the seventh chord based on the G chord. I have referred to the G chord, in previous examples, as the 5 chord or the dominant chord. The G seventh chord yields three more intervals. One of them is the minor seventh, which is the distance between the G and the F chord. Click here to hear the minor seventh between G and F. As I stated before, you can invert an interval and get another related interval. When we invert G to F we get F to G which is the major second. Major seconds are very common, and therefore appear a lot in melodies cause they, along with minor seconds, make up the distance between notes on the scale. Click here to listen to the major second sound of F to G.

Lastly, we come up with a very interesting interval that only occurs naturally in the dominant seventh chord, or in diminished chords. This interval is called the diminished 5th, or augmented fourth or more commonly, the tritone. Click here to listen to the tritone between B and F. Now what makes the tritone interesting, is that it's a symmetrical interval. If you invert it, it sounds exactly the same, the inversion does not yield a new interval. It's still a tritone. Click here to listen to the tritone going down. Melodically, the tritone is hard to sing and usually the last tone goes up a semitone afterwards, to create a 5th interval. Click here to listen to an example of the tritone in a melody. Harmonically, the tritone is very important, because it is what gives a dominant seventh chord it's sound. And harmonically the B and the F will resolve to the C and E. Melodically this is not that important, but later in the course, when we get into substituting chords, we'll see how that tritone allows us to play with substituting chords.

Summing things up

We've found that the major chord with a seventh yields 2 additional intervals and the the dominant seventh yields 3 new intervals bringing our total up to 11.

1. minor second 2. major seventh 3. major second 4. minor seventh 5. minor third 6. major sixth 7. major third 8. minor sixth 9. fifth 10. fourth 11. tritone

Each one of these is a melodic word by itself, and 3rd's 6th's 5th's 4th's can represent the chord in a melody. Seconds and sevenths by themselves aren't as successful at representing the chord, but are also great for a melody construction. Seconds filling up 3rd's 6th's 5th's 4th's within the chord can create very powerful and expressive melodic statements, as we will discover in our next section, scale segments. The important thing is, start listening to these intervals and in your mind, be able to identify what the interval is when you hear it. This will take practice, but it's all part of becoming fluent at the language of melody. One way to help you remember is think of a song that starts with one of these intervals. It's easier to remember a song you're familiar with than an interval. Eventually, you'll be able to sing the interval in your head easy.

Below are different musical examples using different intervals.

Minor Seconds mostly: Example

Thirds: Example

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