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Music and Musical Know-how For You

Author:  David Luebbert Posted:  2/15/01; 8:22:15 PM Topic:  I've Got The World On A String Msg#:  1411 (in response to 1410) Prev/Next:  1410/1412 Reads:  2586

Hi, Rob,

   Wasn't sure what you wanted to know. Is it possible you want to know how to voice an E7? An E7 should include the pitches E, G#, B and D. When playing an E7 on a piano or orchestrating it for a score to be played by a synthesizer, it's most likely that the E will be the lowest note in the chord. It's acceptable for variety's sake to place the G# or B in lowest position if you feel like doing this and it fits your musical context. In most compositional settings this will be done a little less frequently than placing the E in the bass.

  You can place above this lowest note, called the bass note, any of the other three notes in any of the higher octaves in any combination you like the sound of. If you wish, you can use any of the permissible pitches in more than one octave.

Here are some voicing you can try:

 1) Play E in the third octave of the piano. Play D, G# and B in the fourth octave.

2) Play E in the second octave. Play G# and B in the third octave and play D in the fourth

3) Play E and B in the third octave. Play D and G# in the fourth.

You can hear some of the different ways that a dominant 7th chord can sound by visiting the Chord lesson under The Lessons. It's inside of Chord types/Dominant chord types sub-lessons.

There are literally thousands of other voicings that you can try. Each of them emphasize one or more of the constituents sounds of the chord and give the listener a slightly different emotional reaction.

If you are asking for typical progressions that would include an E7 chord, there are several hundred ways that it can be  invoked in different harmonic situations. There are a few really sterotypical ways E7 would be used.

In the most common harmonic cliche, an E7 would be preceded by a Bmi7 and would be followed by an AMa7 chord: like this Bmi7-E7-AMa7.

Another really common routine is for the E7 to be part of a chain of 7th chords whose roots are all a perfect 4th apart. (eg. B7-A7-D7-G7 etc.). These chains would finally move by perfect 4th into a major or minor sounding chord.

In blues based music, the beginning chords of a blues use two 7th chords whose roots are a perfect 4th apart. If E7 was the first chord of a blues, the twelve bar progression might be: E7|A7|E7|E7|A7|A7|E7|E7|F#mi7|B7|E7|B7

I will be posting playable examples of these kinds of progressions in the Chord Progressions sub-lesson soon. You can hear some of my lessons by looking through some of the recent Tutorial Exmaples that are indexed in the Our Composers section of the site.

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