I did not want to do it but some people told me to. But hey, what is up guys! This is Walt Ribeiro, your daily music lesson with Walt, everyday from 6:00 to 8:00PM only at ustream.tv. Check it out. We got some amazing things going on today. We have a question from one of the students saying “Walt, can you explain if jazz works to us? Not just jazz but 7th chords in genera.” And the answer is yes. Absolutely. So it would play something like this.
Okay, something like that, it is really simple. All you got to do there is that I am taking the structure of the chords and instead of playing that C major chord, E major chord, F major chord, I am harmonizing them in the 7th chords. Let me show you what we are talking about.
Here is your piano right here and that a basic chord structure is breaking up into three notes. So now, we have these three notes root, three, five, and seven. Well root three, five, is your three notes. So when I am building a C major chord, when I place C major chord on the guitar or on the piano, here is my C major chord on the guitar. Three notes that are in that chord are my C, E, and G. The root, third and the fifth, so let us look at the piano in a minute. Let us just look at our C, E, and G of our C major chord. Root, three, five, that sounds great if I am not — there is a time even in a jazz piece when I want to play this chord but remember what I am saying guys, there is a time for everything. There is a time for that F major 7 chord. There is a time for that B# minor 7 flat 5. There is a time for everything. There is a time for that 13th chord and yes, there are a lot of times for this chord. So just know that. It is not always just about doing the 7th chords.
All right so now, we got this root, three, five, and seven — C, E, G. I am going to add a B here. So now, the old chord that sounded to me like it is just a basic C major chord, it sounds like that to everyone — let us look at this guys. Here is our basic C major chord right here. A lot of people might notice this. Instead of playing that, I am going to take my C and turn it into a 7th chord like this. It may not sound like a huge difference but if I play it like that. Let us try to play it in 7th chords now.
Okay, it sounds a lot better. At least from a jazz understanding of how it is going to sound as a much more richer, much more harmonically, developed piece of music. I am not just sticking with my chords C, D, G. I am really changing them a lot. So that is how you make things sound “jazzy”. Now, let us go and further into this though. Our chords for the C chord were C, E, and G. I have a piano right underneath here. C, E, G, it does not matter if 7th were on top. The old chord was C, E, G, and the new chord is now C major 7.
And on top of that, if I were to change and go further, here is my 7th chord on a B. These are all 7th chords. So that is the idea. That was a D minor 7. So we are all harmonizing the chords so that before we end, it is C, D minor, E minor, F major, what we had now is a C major 7, E minor 7, D minor 7, F major 7.
So now we are starting to see how the chords — we are still keeping the structure of the chords but we are simply adding the 7th note on top of them and making them sound “jazzier”. That is how you do it guys. That is how it is done. And so if you ever have any questions then that is the answer.
Now, if I wanted to go further into this, I will just start discussing what are 7th chords, how to build 7th chords? But that discusses the concept of how you get from one to the other. Now, just keep watching my videos and then I will teach you guys how you build that structure or building a 7th chord, playing a 7th chord, connecting it to the fifth quarter to the fourth quarter, and creating your own jazz piece. What I want you guys to do tonight – by the way, you guys can add me on twitter, subscribe to the RSS feed, subscribe to my channel, please rate, comment, view – I want you guys to write a song using a 7th chord tonight.
So that if you guys have any questions or anything, the best way that you learn is by doin
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