We’ve all played them, but how many of us can say we know how 7th chords actually work? There’s more to them than meets the eye… In this lesson, we’ll go through the difference between a dominant, ...

When it comes to guitar chords, it all begins with basic ones that are called either major (use just the letter of the chord, eg E for E major) or minor (reduced to the letter plus m, eg Em for E ...

Guitar lessons: You’d be forgiven for thinking that you’d use the minor scale to construct minor 7th chords, but that’s not quite how it works. All scales and chords are compared to the major scale, ...

With its metronomic 4/4 beats, synth basslines and electronic percussion, disco evolved throughout the 1970s, eventually becoming the forerunner of house. It was disco that most successfully married ...

A study suggests that minor and major seventh chords are the happiest sounds in music, but today’s songwriters are ditching them in favour of simple minor chords. But why does this matter? We all love ...

Creating chords for a song is much like building a house; you probably know the sort of style you want, but it is the chords that give the song it’s light and shade. And, in much the same way that the ...

To celebrate the 30th anniversary issue of American Songwriter (Jan/Feb 2015), “Measure for Measure” served up a smorgasbord of 30 handpicked, solid gold chord progressions. This e-book supplements ...

Daniel Levitin, in his popular bestseller entitled This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession from 2006, characterizes the perception of the minor chord, which lowers the third of a ...