Instructional Methods: 7th Chords

Today we're going to do something a little different. As you should know if you read the introduction to this site in my first post, I'm a Music Education major. While this site is doing wonders for helping me apply the knowledge I learn in class, it is also assisting me in refining my teach strategies. So in this post we're going to focus on the "educational" element of music theory.

Posted below is a video from YouTube that explains the concept of 7th chords. Watch it, and then we'll discuss it below. 

Alright. Let's break this teaching style down before we discuss the concept of 7th chord structure ourselves. 

In this video, the whiteboard behind the instructor is used as a visual tool for the students (audience). This is helpful because now we can physically "see" the examples that the instructor gives to break down the lesson. Now, I'm not a huge fan of how fast he speaks in the video, but it's compensated in the end as he does provide a summary of the concepts he covers. 

Moving on to the actual method of teaching he implements in the video, I have mixed feelings about his "Scale Method" in describing the structure of 7th chords. While he is correct in saying that the seventh chord is composed of the 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 7th degrees of a scale, he fails to describe the relationship between the individual notes. Don't get me wrong, this is a excellent video for those that want a basic understanding of what 7th chords are and how to construct them, but fails to give insight as to "why" the chords sound the way they do. 

Seventh chords are essentially triads with the seventh scale degree played with them (He addresses this in the video). From the previous post we know that there are four different types of triads: Major, Minor, Augmented, and Diminished. These triads are created by manipulating the intervals that compose them (between major and minor). A similar concept is used in creating seventh chords. 

We know that triads are composed of three notes, and two intervals of 3rd's describe the relationship between the 1st and 3rd, and 3rd and 5th scale degrees. So, like the video says, to create a seventh chord we add the seventh scale degree on top of the triad. It's important to notice that the interval between the 5th and the 7th degree is also a third. Knowing this, we see a pattern of 3rds between each note. 

Let's look at an example: 

The chord to the left is a C Major 7th Chord. Notice that the relationship between each note and the note that immediately follows it is a 3rd. The resulting chord is composed of a triad (C E G) and a seventh interval (Between C and B). 

As you hopefully know, there are different types of seventh chords. These different chords are created by changing the type of triad along with altering the form of 7th interval on top of it. These details will be expanded on me in a later post. 

So overall, how can we summarize this instructors method? 

Good:

-Things on the board are written out and clear 

-Has his own method of instruction that is easy to understand

Bad:

-Speech is a little rushed and there is little review between steps, making the lesson hard to follow 

-The relationship between the notes in a seventh chord is not explained

-Skips around (whether by poorly editing the video or otherwise) to deliver a concept of seventh chords that cannot be expanded into physical musical notation. 

Again, this portion of the post is more for my benefit then anyone else's, as I'm trying to be analytical with instructional methods. If you feel I overlooked something, or didn't give a clear definition of your basic seventh chord, then please let me know so I can go back and explain it in more detail. 

Thanks for reading!

Sincerely, ZS