# Your favorite 7th chord



## Dim7

Music Theory subforum needs some dumb polls as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh_chord#Tertian here's some sound clips of aforementioned chords....


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## Dr Johnson

You voted for the maj7!!!


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## Dim7

Actually Cmaj7 was my original username here!


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## Dr Johnson

Hmmm. You're not putting me on, are you?


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## Dim7

See this post and the quote in the next post for proof.


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## Dr Johnson

So you were! Blimey.


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## SixFootScowl

Dim7 said:


> Music Theory subforum needs some dumb polls as well.


Well as long as it is a dumb poll, I'll say something dumb, or ignorant at least, but truthful for me: What is a 7th chord? As such I cannot vote meaningfully. Oh well, I don't belong in this thread but felt like dumbly posting in it anyway. :lol: Really need a "What is a 7th chord" poll choice.


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## Dim7

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh_chord#Tertian Includes sound examples.

I should have included the "non-tertian" ones as well though...


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## isorhythm

I actually have a sincere opinion about this dumb poll. I really like the sound of half diminished seventh chords more than any other.


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## Dim7

I find dominant 7th's outside of musical context quite ugly.


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## Dr Johnson

I chose the Dominant 7th for the obvious reason. It's easy to play on the guitar and is essential for the blues.

Hurrah!


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## Balthazar

I voted minor 7th.


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## Dr Johnson

I like minor 7ths too, but we are only allowed one choice.


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## Mahlerian

Dim7 said:


> I find dominant 7th's outside of musical context quite ugly.


That tritone, I suppose?

I'm fond of the four-note quartal chord, which, with a change in voicing, becomes a suspended fourth with minor seventh. Why isn't _that_ in your poll?

Also, there's got to be someone else out there whose first association of the the sound of the minor-major 7th chord was with the James Bond theme.


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## Dim7

Mahlerian said:


> That tritone, I suppose?


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Lydian_chord_on_C.mid

Sounds prettier than dominant 7th to my ears, even though there's both a major seventh and a tritone.


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## Dim7

I hope to divide TC into seven different cliques with this thread. My username will be useful for infiltrating the dim7 fans....


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## Mahlerian

Dim7 said:


> https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Lydian_chord_on_C.mid
> 
> Sounds prettier than dominant 7th to my ears, even though there's both a major seventh and a tritone.


Two major sevenths, in that voicing.

I'd say there the interval between C and F# is softened both by being an octave and a tritone rather than the simple interval and by having the fifth, B, underneath.


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## Dim7

Maybe. Dissonance is fairly straightforward and mathematical with single intervals, but with actual chords it gets complicated.


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## Mahlerian

Dim7 said:


> Maybe. Dissonance is fairly straightforward and mathematical with single intervals, but with actual chords it gets complicated.


Exactly. A minor ninth on its own is an extremely harsh sounding interval, but as part of a chord (or in a harmonic context) it can form a part of a very rich sound.


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## norman bates

_His lessons were built around jazz theory but they were really life lessons in disguise. He would play a really bad sounding chord and ask me, "Wrong chord, huh?" and I'd say, "Yeah, it sounds awful." Then he would play it again as a chord that passed between two other chords and suddenly it sounded like beautiful music. Perspective._

http://rockandrollzen.com/missing-linc-an-open-letter-to-my-great-mentor/

and basically it explains perfectly what I think about chords (and foods, colors, and probably many other things)


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## QuietGuy

I voted for half-diminished 7, but my VERY favorite chord is an French +6 (i.e. C E F# A#) which can also be spelled enharmonically (C E Gb Bb), which makes it a dim5b7 - not one of the choices in the poll. It has a cloudy-dreamy/mysterious-threatening quality that I especially like.

Edit: I am wrong! Actually, spelling it C E Gb Bb would make it Major3rd-dim5-minor7, which makes it more confusing than anything else! My mistake! Sorry about that!


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## SeptimalTritone

I like the just 4-5-6-7 septimal seventh chord. It contains a septimal tritone in it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Harmonic_seventh_chord_just_on_C.mid

These overtone chords are used in Stockhausen's Stimmung, and in (I think) the spectralists' music.


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## MoonlightSonata

QuietGuy said:


> I voted for half-diminished 7, but my VERY favorite chord is an French +6 (i.e. C E F# A#) which can also be spelled enharmonically (C E Gb Bb), which makes it a dim5b7 - not one of the choices in the poll. It has a cloudy-dreamy/mysterious-threatening quality that I especially like.
> 
> Edit: I am wrong! Actually, spelling it C E Gb Bb would make it Major3rd-dim5-minor7, which makes it more confusing than anything else! My mistake! Sorry about that!


That's one of my favourites as well, it's quite nice sometimes to use to move into a passage using the whole-tone scale.

I voted for major 7th.


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## millionrainbows

My favorite kind of seventh is a dom 7, or flatted 7. This dom 7 suspension is one of my favorites: C-G-E-F-Bb.


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## Stavrogin

Dim7

But I am more into 9ths.


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## KenOC

Diminished 2nd, aka "viola unison." :devil:


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Half diminished because it isn't real! :devil:


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## Dim7

Why ?


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

Because it's a dominant 9th without the root.


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## Dim7

I think it's an inverted minor triad with an added major sixth.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

You're the only one who thinks that.


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## Dim7

But it's objectively true, whereas any "missing roots" are purely imaginary.


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## millionrainbows

Dim7 said:


> But it's objectively true, whereas any "missing roots" are purely imaginary.


Not "purely" imaginary; as an example, the vii chord is resolved as if it were an incomplete G7: (G)-B-D-F, so the resolution is "evidence" of its considered existence; the function is there, as if it were real, with a real root. See Walter Piston and Schoenberg's harmony texts.


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