Question about sevenths

[nuxnamon]

I think it's a C# or Bb

[moonpie]

Yup I just looked it up and C E G Bb is in fact a C7, I just got C7 and Cmaj7 confused lol

Thanks!

Its sort of right.

Theres different types of minor - Harmonic Minor has a #7th in the scale - so in Dm, there is C# as well as a Bb. So you were right initially in a way - except the 7th chord is C#dim instead of Cdim. So C#dim7 is C#, E, G, Bb. Harmonic minor is interesting - as you get all the dim and augmented chords in the key that give it a real sense of being minor and youll have a major V.

The other type of minor is - natural minor - without the #7th (C#). Without having a c#, this has major implications for all the chords, and turns them into pretty run of the mill minors and majors and with a minor V. So youll end up with Cmaj as your 7th chord. So the website was telling you how to play in natural minor - while you seem to have some knowledge of harmonic minor.

To be honest - if you experiment with progressions (and importantly) inversions of chords in the key of D Harmonic Minor, youll get much more interesting results than Natural minor. Natural minor gets very samey after a while. Most classical music would be written using Harmonic Minor chords, as well as jazz.


Other examples - A Harmonic Minor will have a G#, E Harmonic minor will have an F# and a D#.

Harmonic Minor

i - minor
ii - dim
iii - aug
iv - minor
V - major
VI - minor
vii - dim

Natural Minor
i - minor
ii - dim
iii - major
iv - minor
v- minor
vi - minor
vii - major

[doghouse]

moonpie has it except I wouldn't call the C# a #7 (no such thing), it's just a major 7th.

Harmonic minor was invented way, way back by musicians who hated the absence of an authentic cadence in minor keys. In modern music, it's commonly used in jazz, not so much in blues, rock, etc.