Chords

The maj7 chord, in every key

By Oliver Duschka, the developer of Drop2

The major seventh is the chord jazz comes home to. This page holds every drop-2 shape of it — twelve fingerings across three string sets, each one playable — and re-spells and re-fingers all of them for whichever root you pick.

Four notes, one calm sound

A maj7 chord is a major triad with the major seventh stacked on top: C, E, G and B — degrees 1, 3, 5 and 7. That seventh sits a half step under the octave root, and the closeness is the sound: not a tension that demands to move, but a shimmer on a chord that has already arrived. You will see the same quality written maj7, M7 or Δ; they all mean these four notes.

Two of the four do the talking: the 3rd makes it major, and the 7th makes it maj7. Those two are the guide tones; the root names the chord and the fifth fills it out. Keep that division of labor in mind below — in every card, the notes worth following are the 3rd and the 7th.

Pick a root

Everything below follows this selector. Pick a root and the cards re-finger to the nearest workable frets, the note names re-spell the way the key demands, and the progression links at the bottom re-point to the right keys. The order is the circle of fifths, the app's own — stepping one chip to the right moves everything up a fifth.

On the top four strings

The top four strings — D, G, B and e — are where comping mostly lives: clear of the bass register, quick to speak. This is the set the practice pages' voice-led progressions use. Every grip here sits four frets end to end at most, and the four inversions climb the neck in order of their top note — the same ladder the app's Learn screen shows.

On the middle four

One set down — A, D, G and B — the same chord sits lower and rounder, still clear enough to comp with. The four inversions ladder up the neck here too. One of them asks for a five-fret reach — which one depends on the root — and the other three stay compact.

On the bottom four

On E, A, D and G the voicing turns dark. Four close voices this low can blur — the same register problem that makes a six-string barre chord collide with a bass player — so these grips earn their keep in solo playing, or when nobody else is holding the low end. Here too, one of the four needs the five-fret reach.

Every sound on this page is the Drop2 app's own sampled guitar and bass — from the MuseScore General sound library, used under the MIT license.

The top note picks the shape

Four inversions are not four flavors of the same choice; each puts a different chord tone on top, and the top note is what a listener follows. Root position carries the 3rd — E — on top. First inversion carries the 5th, G; second inversion the 7th, B; third inversion the root itself. Comping under a melody, choose the shape whose top note is the note you want heard. Moving between chords, choose the one nearest your hand — each voice taking its shortest path is the whole craft of voice leading, and it is why the practice pages' progressions barely move between grips.

Why three of the cards say 6

One card in each group above is named C6 rather than Cmaj7 — always the third inversion. That inversion puts the seventh at the bottom of the chord and the root on top, which lands the root a minor ninth above the seventh: the harshest interval in the book, on the chord whose whole job is calm. So the shape trades the seventh for the sixth — B becomes A — and maj7 becomes a 6 chord: same function, none of the sting. The app's calculator applies the same rule, and the drop-2 article tells the story on its C6 card. The chord the swap lands on is two-sided, too: C6 shares its four notes with Am7 — the relative minor's m7 — a mirror the m7 page reads from the other side.

Twelve fingerings, fewer sounds

Count the cards: twelve fingerings. Now count the sounds: from this root, seven. The guitar repeats itself — the same four pitches turn up on more than one string set, at different heights on the neck — and the cards above include every recurrence. Bottom note first, the duplicates right now are:

• E B C G — Top 4 · 1st inversion, Mid 4 · 1st inversion, Bottom 4 · 1st inversion
• G C E B — Top 4 · 2nd inversion, Mid 4 · 2nd inversion
• A E G C — Mid 4 · 3rd inversion, Bottom 4 · 3rd inversion
• C G B E — Mid 4 · root position, Bottom 4 · root position

No chord chart mentions this, and it is the most practical fact on the page: you are not memorizing twelve chords. You are learning seven sounds, many of them reachable from more than one place — so when a chart calls for this chord, the useful fingering is the one nearest your hand. Same sound, no leap.

Where the maj7 does its work

Shapes are only half a chord; the other half is what it does in a progression. The maj7 is the I chord — the destination — in three of the five forms on the practice pages, and in rhythm changes it also serves as the IV of the key a fifth higher. From the root selected above, Cmaj7 is:

• the I of the major ii–V–I in C
• the I of the turnaround in C
• the I of rhythm changes in C
• the IV of rhythm changes in G

Each link opens that practice page already set to the key in question, band ready to loop. If the maj7 sound is new to you, start with the ii–V–I and listen for the landing — the V7 resolving onto the I is the sound this chord exists to make.

Where Drop2 comes in

These twelve shapes are the maj7 slice of what the Drop2 app teaches. Learn lays them out the way this page does — every quality, inversion and string set, same degree colors — and Train turns them into a drill: it calls out a voicing, you find it, and the app checks by ear, through the microphone, that the strings said what you meant. Play-Along, part of Premium, then puts the band from the practice pages behind you while you comp the changes yourself.

Next: The m7 chord, in every key →