How to Harmonize With the Major Scale in Jazz Guitar

Video Transcript

" Hi! My name is John Armstrong with expertvillage.com. I am a professional guitar instructor and today we are going to be studying beginning jazz guitar. Okay next I would like to discuss harmonizing the major scale using 7 chords. Just like with triads, we do combine every other note in the scale but now instead of combining in groups of 3, like we did we triads, we will combine in groups of 4. You will find that then you'll have in the G major scale; let's use G major again for example you will have the root, the 3rd, the 5th and the 7th of the G major scale. Easy enough; gives us a G major 7 chord. Starting now with your second chord. You have a A minor triad, you have to determine what your 7th is. Now in this particular case it is going to be G. It is always the note behind the note you are looking for in the scale. In this case it is G. Well G to the key of A is a flatted 7, so we are going to have a minor 7. So our 2 chord in a major key is a minor 7 chord. You move on to a B minor triad, minor 3 chord, you will find once again that you have another flatted 7, a B minor 7 chord, so your minor 3 chord. You move onto the 4th chord and its going to be C major triad. You will see that the 7th note, the 4th note in that 4 note grouping is a B note which is going to be a major 7 chord. Moving up to the 5th chord, we have a D major triad but you will notice that the 4th note in that grouping, B, F sharp A and C is going to give me a D7 chord, a D dominate 7. So we have your dominant 7 chord. Your 5, 7 chord except where we have 1 major 7, 2 minor 7, 3 minor 7, 4 major 7, 5/7. Moving up to the next triad, we have an E minor triad. You'll see that you have E, G,B and D. That creates an E minor 7 chord; so 6 minor 7. Moving up to the next triad, we start off with a F sharp diminished triad or diminished 7. We look at the note before it and it is E; that is a single flatted 7 in the key of F sharp, so we have a F sharp minor 7, flat 5 or an F sharp half-diminished. Going to the 7 chords in the key of G major, using 7th chords. G major 7, A minor 7, B minor 7, C major 7, D 7, E minor 7, F sharp half diminished or minor 7 flat 5, resolving up to G major 7. So major 7, minor 7, major 7, dominant 7, minor 7 half-diminished. That is your major harmonized major scale formula for 7 chords."