Hey Friend,

Found a cool video that locks in some of what we’ve been talking about for the past few weeks. This one is more focused on Blues tones and phrasing, but it expands on one of the lessons we did earlier.

I mentioned that the dominant 7th chord is probably the most popular of the 7ths, and Blues is the big reason why. 

By taking the seventh note from any chord’s primary key and dropping it down one fret to flatten the note, you can add that to a major chord and it becomes the dominant 7th chord.

It’s that minor 7 note that give the dominant 7 chord its distinctive Bluesy sound. 

From a sonic perspective (what your ears are hearing), there is a bit of dissonance added to an otherwise stable-sounding triad. That basically means you’ve created some conflict within the melding of the notes in the chord.

So conflict can be good, as you can hear!

I like the way Steve Stine explains the dominant 7th chord construction in his video, “1 Must Know Blues Guitar Chord" (Pulled this from the Guitar World article The One Blues Chord Every Guitarist Should Know). As he says, he’s not digging into the theory aspect, but he gives you a simple way to remember how to build a dominant 7th chord easily. 

Check it out. It’s a short 10 minute lesson. Don’t bother trying to download the tabs, because the links don’t work. I gave you a 12-bar Blues tab last week, so you can use it for basic reference. 

Here are those tabs again, in case you’ve misplaced them:

Dominant 7th 12 Bar Blues Exercise MP3

You’ll see they tie in nicely with Steve's video, so enjoy the lesson. Have a great Saturday!

Peace~

Dave