I really like "7 chords" and a year ago I wrote a song using them not really knowing what they were. (Lucky for me BiaB allows the usage of chords that I might not understand.)
Because of a recent thread here discussing minor chords, I'm beginning to understand a bit of the theory behind how chords are constructed and so, put this table together.
Does this table make sense?
https://soundcloud.com/user-646279677 BiaB 2025 Windows For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.
No. The #1 chord of a Dominant C7 is F, not C. C7 is the #5 chord.
Huh? "The #1 chord of a Dominant 7 is F?" First of all the correct language is "C Dominant 7" to distinguish from Cmaj7. And what is "the #1 chord"?
His chart is about the steps on a scale that make Dominant 7th chords, and his C is exactly right.
Thumper, where there is a slight technical error is on the C#. First of all, I have never seen C# used. It'd be Db. If you really want to use C#, TECHNICALLY the 3rd note is an E# rather than an F. Same sound in your ear, but "scalarly" correct. (Did I just make up a word?)
Remember, from the root, every major scale (also known as Ionian) starting at any note is WWHWWWH. It's whole step whole step half step to get to the 3rd. C# to D# is a whole step. D# to E# (or F sonically) is a whole step. E# to F# is a half step. Very minor thing in that C# is a key most would never use, but to preserve "music language", E# would be correct. I have also never seen the key of A#. That'd be Bb. The scale for dominant 7th is Mixolydian mode, which is WWHWWHW.
Refer to the circle of 5ths. C is at 12 o'clock. Moving right are "sharp" keys, so C, G, D, A, E and B. (5ths.) To the left are "flat keys", so C, F, Bb, Eb, Ab, Db and Gb. (4ths.) That is what determines notation being sharps or flats. And that's where Mike's suggestion of basic theory enters the game. Rather than think of the root notes of those chords chromatically, think about them in intervals around the wheel of 5ths, so write your chart this way.
Thumper, where there is a slight technical error is on the C#.
The same thing has happened in with the G#7, where the 3 should be B#, not C. Double flats are even more weird. I have to say that in my mind when playing, I treat B# as C, Cb as B, and so on. Perhaps I'll eventually get used to the proper spellings.
Jazz relative beginner, starting at a much older age than was helpful. AVL:MXE Linux; Windows 11 BIAB2024 Audiophile, a bunch of other software. Kawai MP6, Ui24R, Focusrite Saffire Pro40 and Scarletts .
You guys have my head spinning. I know all four of you know this stuff, so I guess we have blame Thumper? Or perhaps you all are just overthinking the simple question - What are the notes of a Dominate 7th chord and how are they derived from the major scale? And by the way, there is an error in the Table.
Not any more. Moral of the story is don't do stuff like that while watching the Browns game.
Were you going for wanting it to say flatted 7 or that I originally had a Dmaj7 spelled out with the C# instead of the C♮?
As far as what his intention was, once again, take some basic music theory lessons. This kind of thing would be covered within the first 3 or 4 classes. This scale is Mixolydian mode.
There are no shortcuts to learning. You of all people on this forum should know that. You didn't get your advanced degree by looking for shortcuts or doing things the easy way, did you?
No. The #1 chord of a Dominant C7 is F, not C. C7 is the #5 chord.
You would benefit by learning a little chord theory.
Mike Halloran, this is the 2nd data point I'm aware of where you are demonstrating a child-like ignorance of the subject being discussed. The first was where you had the immature pomposity to believe that you know more about RealPlayer than the designers of that software, RealNetworks; despite having no software background whatsoever. And despite given evidence from a well-trained AI bot and Wikipedia, you still maintain that you are smarter than all 3 of these sources. News flash: you can't hold a candle to any one of these reputable sources. https://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=102144&Number=776259#Post776259
And now, here we go again. You have supplied a 2nd data point of ineptness. Not only can you not read the simple chord spelling table I posted, your reply makes no sense at all. "The #1 chord of a Dominant C7 is F, not C. C7 is the #5 chord" what on earth does that mean ???
A clear trend is being displayed that describes who you are; and it should be embarassing to you.
I admit that I picked up music late in life and so I am here to learn; full disclosure: I'm an amateur in music. Nonetheless I try to contribute value on a variety of subjects wherever I can. You on the other hand seem to be trapped in an adolescent stage of life where pretending is your goal; this is probably driven by inadequacy and jealousy.
Can I ask if you graduated High School? This is a serious question because you would do well to sit at the feet of others in this forum that actually know something. I may be an amateur in music, but sir, you aregreener than me.
Why don't you do us all a favor going forward and not respond to any of my posts.
https://soundcloud.com/user-646279677 BiaB 2025 Windows For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.
No. The #1 chord of a Dominant C7 is F, not C. C7 is the #5 chord.
You would benefit by learning a little chord theory.
The number 1 chord of Thumper's chart certainly looked correct to me. What have I missed?
AudioTrack, I think it is correct too. This is from Google. C7 stands for a dominant seventh chord, spelled C E G Bb. Specifically, it is a major triad (C E G) with an added minor seventh (Bb).
Perhaps I/we should ignore Mr. Halloran's blunders.
https://soundcloud.com/user-646279677 BiaB 2025 Windows For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.
Thumper, where there is a slight technical error is on the C#.
The same thing has happened in with the G#7, where the 3 should be B#, not C. Double flats are even more weird. I have to say that in my mind when playing, I treat B# as C, Cb as B, and so on. Perhaps I'll eventually get used to the proper spellings.
Thanks Gordon, I struggle with the same. What I see emerging for me is "two brains".
I'm see much value in the "strict" proper spellings (double sharps, etc.) from a music theory perspective. To the degree that I can grasp this, it will allow much better communication with others and perhaps better composition of my songs . . . "Brain 1"
But when I pick up my bass and jam along to a backing track, or better yet with friends, I'm thinking fretboard geometry/patterns, what sounds good to my ears and having fun . . . "Brain 2"
I wonder if the twain will ever meet For sure it's a journey.
https://soundcloud.com/user-646279677 BiaB 2025 Windows For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.
No. The #1 chord of a Dominant C7 is F, not C. C7 is the #5 chord.
You would benefit by learning a little chord theory.
The number 1 chord of Thumper's chart certainly looked correct to me. What have I missed?
AudioTrack, I think it is correct too. This is from Google. C7 stands for a dominant seventh chord, spelled C E G Bb. Specifically, it is a major triad (C E G) with an added minor seventh (Bb).
Perhaps I/we should ignore Mr. Halloran's blunders.
Mr. Halloran did not blunder, however he could have been less blunt and given more explanation. Yes C7 is C-E-G-Bb, BUT C7 is the 5th chord in the F scale, (F-G-A-B-C-D-E), thus C7 is the dominant seventh chord in the key of F, i.e. F is the #1 chord. That is what he was talking about.
Steve, since you keep bringing up Realplayer you may be interested in this:
They finally did extract music from a silent film but as you can guess that is not the method Realplayer used. I stand firm that the nomenclature companies are using is not totally what it seems to be. I supposed if they used " we extract the music from a film and then convert it to MP3" (or what ever format they choose) would be to confusing for the general public so they just use convert. It is what it is.
Unclear if the pianist is a total beginner or a professional jazz player?
64 bit Win 10 Pro, the latest BiaB/RB, Roland Octa-Capture audio interface, a ton of software/hardware
Most chords include the first third and fifth notes, the triad or C E G for C Major
Adding the seventh C E G B gives you a Major 7th chord CM7
The dominant 7th lowers the seventh by a half step making the C7 chord C E G Bb
The C minor scale is C D Eb F G Ab Bb (C)
So the dominant 7th chord uses the major scale triad C E G and adds the minor 7th, Bb
So if you are C minor, looking at the C minor scale, following the formula 1 3 5 (triad) +7, you get C Eb G Bb for Cm7
Bonus fact: the C dominant chord also contains the E diminished triad, E G Bb, sometimes called a tritone.
So your first step, if you don't know this already, is to learn your major and minor scales. Then simply use the formula for the triad and whatever additions are added.
Basic music theory is not difficult, and if you take the time to learn, everything else in music will get a lot easier. The time you will eventually save will far exceed the time you spend learning the theory.
until you can play without thinking with either brain. Once it's second nature you will move much mo' smootha along that neck.
I don't know if you ever tried what I once suggested about learning the neck. Most people learn to fret from the nut until they hit the body. That has a place for learning scales. But if you learn the neck in a "planar" fashion at an angle. In your case, on a 4 string bass, your first note on an open string on the top string is a G. Find every G on every string all the way to the 15th fret on the 4th string. And work on playing G after G after G as fast as you can. That's how you learn to not play everything based around the 3rd fret. Then work on playing intervals and patterns in every key and in every position on the neck. About 95% of the bass players I ever knew played almost nothing but root notes and in the same place on the neck. So to relate to the dominant 7 that was the topic, using C as the example, play C E G Bb Bb G E C, so walk up the chord and back down. Over and over, faster and faster. Then move your hand up the neck and find the next position and do it again. Also remember that you don't have to play all the notes in the same octave. You can play C3 E2 G2 Bb3 or whatever. That adds flavor.
Also watch THIS VIDEO and pay close attention to Victor Wooten explaining "wrong" notes. Watch it with whichever brain you want, but try to focus on the message. It's great stuff by one of the best out there. It will help you with "flavor". Try hard to use those scales and such and try to not turn into a boring "root notes only" bass player. You are allowed to use 3rds and 5ths. It's in the rules!!
Mr. Halloran did not blunder, however he could have been less blunt and given more explanation.
Mario, I will respectfully disagree that Mr. Halloran did not make a blunder and I’ll explain in a bit.
But let’s zoom out. We had just come off of a nice cordial, harmonious, professional and engaging discussion here https://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=102870&Number=781164 where you, Gordon and especially Dan participated in a chat about minor chords. Mr. Halloran was (thankfully) nowhere to be found. I, and I’m sure others learned a lot in that discussion.
Fast forward about a day to this thread where I wanted to solidify and extend my new-found chord decomposition knowledge. In this thread my goal was to have folks confirm or deny my table of Dom 7 chords.
My question was simple, clear and to the point: “Does this table make sense?” [Scroll to the top and see it].
The 1st reply was from Mr. Halloran; he said “No. The #1 chord of a Dominant C7 is F, not C. C7 is the #5 chord ” He also said “You would benefit by learning a little chord theory.”
1. Eddie then says “Huh . . . his C is exactly right.” 2. AudioTrack then says “The number 1 chord of Thumper's chart certainly looked correct to me.” 3. I then did a Google “C7 stands for a dominant seventh chord, spelled C E G Bb. Specifically, it is a major triad (C E G) with an added minor seventh (Bb)” 4. Notes then says “So the dominant 7th chord uses the major scale triad C E G and adds the minor 7th, Bb”
Btw, for C7 my table shows C E G Bb which agrees with each of the 4 sources above.
So how is it that my table doesn’t make sense as claimed by Mr. Halloran ??? Once again, is Mr. Hollaran now smarter than Google and the other three?
This is why I use the terms greener, adolescent and blunder. If my table didn’t make sense, others here with credentials would have so stated. Indeed, if you think my table makes no sense, do tell why. I respect people who speak the truth.
FWIW, he is right about something, I would benefit by learning a little chord theory. But equally true is so would he, as well as written English and fact checking.
The solution to this is for him to refrain from blundering up my posts in the future; hopefully he will agree.
As for the “Extract Audio From Silent Videos” article, I read it and watched the video. I fail to see how that is relevant to the conversion algorithm that RealNetworks uses in RealPlayer. Are you saying that MIT, Microsoft and Adobe also worked on RealPlayer?
https://soundcloud.com/user-646279677 BiaB 2025 Windows For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.
I still want to know what “The number 1 chord" is supposed to mean. And how it could be F. Since we were talking about the C dominant 7th at the time, in my mind the "#1 chord" in that C scale would be C.
So what is " “The number 1 chord"?
And to clear on something, when you need to learn is theory. Overall theory. General theory. Basic theory. That will cover scales, from which you can build chords.
One thing I was indeed taught as it is stated here is that the dominant 7 chord of a scale includes a minor 7th. That has often led to "But this isn't a minor chord." So I always taught it as "a flatted 7."
You can fine tune and tweak the discussion many ways when discussing chords. If you look at a Dm7b5, does it not consist of the same notes as an Fm6? A Dm7b5 is D F Ab and C and an Fm6 is F Ab C and D on top. Depending on context, key, and voicing, and what the bass player is doing, those 4 notes can be either of those chords.
But I still don't know what “The number 1 chord" means. Please teach me! I may have been doing it wrong for the last 67+ years!
I still want to know what “The number 1 chord" is supposed to mean.
I think that what he means is that it's the '1' chord to which a dominant 7 would reasonably, but not necessarily, be expected to resolve.
Two obvious points here:
1) It would have been better if that had been made clear in the first place, rather than a bunch of us trying to decipher a short, perhaps clumsy, sentence.
2) BassThumper was expressly asking for feedback to help him firm up on some of his chord theory, so "you would benefit from a little chord theory" is perhaps not an entirely helpful comment.
Jazz relative beginner, starting at a much older age than was helpful. AVL:MXE Linux; Windows 11 BIAB2024 Audiophile, a bunch of other software. Kawai MP6, Ui24R, Focusrite Saffire Pro40 and Scarletts .
I think I know some music theory and I have no idea what Mike meant.
In your chart, I would only suggest that you need to be consistent with flats and sharps and use the enharmonic spellings. This may well lead to E# instead of F, for example, or even a double flat etc.
The way I learned it, to spell a triad, you always skip a letter. So it’s either C# E# G# , or perhaps better, Db F Ab
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Roland Integra-7, Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
The standard joke used to be "Just play everything in C to avoid those black keys." And then up comes a dominant 7th and blows that whole theory up. Are the guys in your performing band theory fluent so if you are playing in F they know 4 fingers means "Go to Bb"? It's such a joy to play with theory strong people. I don't want to have to teach basic basics to 70 year old musicians. I once told a bass player "In the second half of that phrase play a 3rd instead of the root." What was heard in the room next was every one of these.
I think that what he means is that it's the '1' chord to which a dominant 7 would reasonably, but not necessarily, be expected to resolve.
... which also conflicted with the purpose of the table, which was to check BT's understanding of the notes in the chord, not the notes in the scale. Didn't I make a mistake like that recently somewhere else in these fora
Jazz relative beginner, starting at a much older age than was helpful. AVL:MXE Linux; Windows 11 BIAB2024 Audiophile, a bunch of other software. Kawai MP6, Ui24R, Focusrite Saffire Pro40 and Scarletts .
The standard joke used to be "Just play everything in C to avoid those black keys." And then up comes a dominant 7th and blows that whole theory up. Are the guys in your performing band theory fluent so if you are playing in F they know 4 fingers means "Go to Bb"? It's such a joy to play with theory strong people. I don't want to have to teach basic basics to 70 year old musicians. I once told a bass player "In the second half of that phrase play a 3rd instead of the root." What was heard in the room next was every one of these.
But in C, the dominant is the G7 ... which is also on only white notes, so you're good to go.
BTW, in Britain we have an expression "That's not cricket", referring of course to the game not the insect, and it means "not playing by the spirit of the game".
Jazz relative beginner, starting at a much older age than was helpful. AVL:MXE Linux; Windows 11 BIAB2024 Audiophile, a bunch of other software. Kawai MP6, Ui24R, Focusrite Saffire Pro40 and Scarletts .
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Or perhaps you all are just overthinking the simple question - What are the notes of a Dominate 7th chord and how are they derived from the major scale? 
And by the way, there is an error in the Table.![[Linked Image - Only viewable when logged in]](https://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=download&Number=25672&filename=Screenshot 2023-11-05 172707.png)
![[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]](https://i.imgur.com/tux3c9E.jpg)
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