A More Detailed Explanation of the Minor Major7 Chord

By: Kole

Since it is now understood that all music is subjective, I will not lecture you on why I think the Minor Major7 chord sounds good. Rather, I would like to inform you on where you can typically find the Minor Major7 chord and how/where you could use it in a progression.

There are a few different ideas on the function of the Minor Major7 chord, but I will only list two of them in this article, as it is already quite long and I could continue on the topic for many more pages.

1. Replace a normal Minor or Minor7 chord with a Minor Major7 chord and use it as “color.” This is often done in Jazz, where you may want to “spice” up the progression or you have a melody that sits a half step away from the root of the minor chord you are playing underneath it. So to support this melody note, you have the rhythm section instruments (guitar or piano usually) play a Minor Major7 chord w/ that melody note somewhere in the voicing (usually in the top).

2. Use it as the “default” tonic chord in Harmonic or Melodic minor. If you are playing Jazz (although this applies to other styles), 7th chords dominate the normal chord formula rather than basic triads. So, in Harmonic and Melodic minor we find the Minor Major 7 chord naturally occurring on the 1 or tonic chord. This would be one of the more common diatonic uses of the Minor Major7 chord, however you could also find the Minor Major7 chord diatonically occurring as the 5 chord in Lydian Dominant.

Hopefully I haven’t confused any of you, as some of this gets pretty deep in to theory (and the last thing I want to do is sound like a snobby theory geek who is trying to prove his “knowledge”). I just wanted to inform you of some of the more common uses of the Minor Major7 chord and how you could use it in your own compositions. Unfortunately, this is the easiest way I can explain it.

Well, I hope this article has been beneficial to all of you and please do feel free to not only listen to the examples (HERE), but also send me an e-mail if you have any questions.

Take care and keep composing fellow artists!

Copyright © 2008 Kole (Kyle Hicks). All rights reserved.