Chords that feel like night
Build minor, major and seventh chords from semitone formulas, and play a slow four-chord progression on the CHORD machine over your bass.
A chord is a formula
Stack notes on a root, counting semitones. Minor is 0-3-7, major is 0-4-7. Only the middle note moves, and it flips the mood from dark to bright.
Sevenths for the night
Add a fourth note and the chord softens. A minor 7th (0-3-7-10) sounds relaxed and dusky, a major 7th (0-4-7-11) warm and dreamy. A lot of downtempo and jazz lives on these two.
Progressions in numerals
Chords are named by where their root sits in the scale: i is the root chord, iv the chord on the 4th note, VI on the 6th. Lower case means minor, upper case major. Am–G–Dm–Am is i–VII–iv–i, in any key.
Inversions and a taste of Dorian
An inversion plays the same chord notes in another order, so chords can change by small steps instead of jumps. Dorian is minor with a raised 6th: in A it turns the iv chord into D major, a brighter, more hopeful minor.
Lesson 11
- Chords that feel like night.
- In this lesson you will build minor, major and seventh chords from semitone formulas, and play a slow four-chord progression on the CHORD machine over your bass.
A chord is a formula, counted in semitones from the root.
Minor is 0-3-7 and major 0-4-7: only the middle note moves. Add a fourth note and you get the soft seventh chords. The CHORD machine's SHAPE knob uses these same names.
Hear each formula on the same root, A. Switch between the four while it plays.
Minor: dark. Major: bright. m7: relaxed and dusky. Maj7: warm, a little bittersweet.
Chords move in progressions, written in Roman numerals so they work in any key. Here are two melancholic ones, and the one your bass already plays: A, F, D, E.
Play the three progressions.
Watch the four chord rows: the notes barely move from chord to chord. Each chord is voiced as an inversion, so it steps instead of jumping.
The 7ths blur the edges. Your B01 progression never quite comes home, which keeps it feeling like night.
- Go to B01, press RECORD and select T6.
- Turn SHAPE until the screen shows m7, DECAY to about 110 and REVERB SEND to about 60.
Tap T6: a soft minor 7th chord.
- Tap T5 and T6 together.
- If they clash, the sounds are tuned differently: select T6, hold FUNC and turn PITCH one semitone at a time until chord and bass agree.
Bass and chord on the same root: one instrument, low and high.
- Open the SCALE menu (FUNC + PAGE), press T6, set LEN to 16 and press BACK.
- Place one chord on 1.
- Then set T6's LEN back to 64 the same way.
One long chord at the top of every bar, copied to all four pages.
Follow the bass
- Press PAGE for page 2 and on 1, hold the trig, press LEVEL/DATA until NOTE shows, and turn it 4 semitones down.
- Page 3: 7 down.
- Page 4: 5 down.
The chords move with the bass now. Bar 2 sounds sour: an F minor doesn't belong in A minor.
Fix bar 2 with a major 7th
- On page 2, hold 1 and turn SHAPE to Maj7.
- Bars 3 and 4 stay m7.
Am7, Fmaj7, Dm7, Em7: warm and wide in the middle, never fully home.
Shape the voicing
- With no trig held, turn COLOR slowly.
- On the CHORD machine it changes the mix of the chord's voices, so some notes come forward and others fade.
- Then try SWEEP for the timbre.
Same chords, from thin and glassy to full and soft. Keep what feels like night.
A taste of Dorian
- On page 3, hold 1 and turn SHAPE to Major.
- D major brings in F#, the raised 6th of A.
- Keep it, or turn it back to m7.
Bar 3 glows brighter for a moment: a hopeful kind of minor.
- Press RECORD to leave grid recording and listen to all four bars with the bass and drums.
- Save: hold FUNC and long-press SETTINGS.
Beat, bass and four chords: a full night-time loop.
Which semitone formula is a minor 7th chord (m7)?
Answer
A minor triad (0-3-7) plus a 7th 10 semitones up. 0-4-7-11 is the major 7th, Maj7.
3 up is minor, 4 up is major. 10 or 11 on top makes a seventh.
This lesson's challenge
Lock a different SHAPE onto one chord at a time (sus2, sus4, madd9, m9no5) and hear how each one colours your progression. Keep your favourite and write the others in your notes.