In music, a major seventh chord is any nondominant seventh chord where the "third" note is a major third above the root.
Most typically, major seventh chord refers to where the "seventh" note is a major seventh above the root (a fifth above the third note) play. This is more precisely known as the major/major seventh chord, and it can be written as maj7, M7, Δ, ⑦ etc. It can be represented by the integer notation {0, 4, 7, 11}. In the case where the seventh note is a minor seventh above the root, it is called a dominant seventh chord (although this is also a kind of major seventh chord).
Examples of tonic major seventh chords include Bread's "Make It With You", America's "Tin Man", Blood Sweat & Tears' "You've Made Me So Very Happy", third and main part of Paul McCartney and Wings' "Band On The Run", Carly Simon's "The Right Thing To Do", and, most famously, Chicago's "Colour My World".
Moving in the seventies to replace the prominence of the dominant seventh as a stable tonic more common in the first fifteen years of the rock era, the major seventh was common in all styles, "pervading soul, country rock, soft rock, MOR (middle-of-the-road styles), jazz rock, funk, and disco." "In soul and disco, a tonic minor seventh harmony often alternated with a dominant seventh or dominant ninth chord on ...In other styles, major seventh and minor seventh chords generally mix (usually with eleventh chords...) to create a diatonic composite in either major or minor mode....The most famous major seventh chord in the history of music, the one that opens...'Colour My World', even though the song departs from the usual pattern described above by 'colouring' the harmonic succession with several chromatic chords. Still, seven of that song's fourteen chords, including the tonic, are major sevenths or ninths, demonstrating the primacy of that chord type."
According to Forte, the major seventh chord is exemplified by IV7, which originates melodically.
The just major seventh chord is tuned in the ratios 8:10:12:15, as a just major chord is tuned 4:5:6 and a just major seventh is tuned 15:8. Play
| Component intervals from root | ||
| major seventh | ||
| perfect fifth | ||
| major third | ||
| root | ||
| Forte number or Tuning | ||
| 8:10:12:15 | ||
Read more about Major Seventh Chord: Major/major Seventh Chord Table
Famous quotes containing the words major, seventh and/or chord:
“The man, or the boy, in his development is psychologically deterred from incorporating serving characteristics by an easily observable fact: there are already people around who are clearly meant to serve and they are girls and women. To perform the activities these people are doing is to risk being, and being thought of, and thinking of oneself, as a woman. This has been made a terrifying prospect and has been made to constitute a major threat to masculine identity.”
—Jean Baker Miller (20th century)
“When my lover came to bed,
the knot came untied
all by itself.
My dress,
held up by the strings of a loosened belt,
barely stayed on my hips.
Friend,
that’s as much as I know now.
When he touched my body,
I couldn’t at all remember
who he was,
who I was,
or how It was.”
—Amaru (c. seventh century A.D.)
“Give me the keys. I feel for the common chord again,
Sliding by semi-tones till I sink to a minor,—yes,
And I blunt it into a ninth, and I stand on alien ground,
Surveying a while the heights I rolled from into the deep;
Which, hark, I have dared and done, for my resting-place is found,
The C Major of this life: so, now I will try to sleep.”
—Robert Browning (1812–1889)