Week 10 — Readings & Resources · Seventh Chords

Course: MUS 156 Music Theory I · Kenosis College
Instructor: Professor Hemsworth
Unit: Learning Unit 10 of 16 (Week 10) · two sessions per week
Your primary reading is the Week 10 chapter (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer.

How to use this page

Everything here is a link to an external resource — open it in your browser, the way you'd open any link a friend sent you. Nothing to buy, download, or sign into.

The load is light on purpose: six links, grouped by the unit's three big ideas. One item per group is plenty; all six is thorough. If a link disagrees with the course on a convention, the course convention in the Week 10 chapter wins — and this week the stakes are real: the chapter's flagged regression (the seventh chord on ^7 in a major key is viiø7, half-diminished, never viio7) is misprinted all over the internet. Any resource, video, or chatbot that hands you B–D–F–A♭ as "the chord on B in C major" has just failed the key-membership test. Noticing is the skill.

① The five qualities and their symbols

Maps to the chapter's five qualities and reading the symbols sections, and Session 1's Segments 2–4.

• Seventh Chords — Open Music Theory — all five qualities built as triad-plus-seventh, with chord symbols, worked spelling examples, and identification strategy. The single best companion read for this unit; its five-quality inventory matches the course's exactly. (reading, ~15 min)
• Seventh Chords — musictheory.net, Lesson 45 — the same five chords as an animated click-through: watch each quality assemble on the staff one third at a time. A good first stop if you'd rather see the snowman get its hat than read about it. (interactive lesson, ~5 min)
• How to Play the 5 Types of 7th Chords — Feona Lee Jones — a pianist plays and compares all five qualities on one root, which is exactly the studio in preview: hear the staircase, quality by quality, hands on keys. (video — turn captions on with the CC button)

② Inversions, figures, and the diatonic sevenths

Maps to the chapter's diatonic sevenths and inversions and figures sections, and Session 1's Segments 5–6.

• Seventh Chord Inversion — musictheory.net, Lesson 47 — the four bass positions and their figures, animated. As you click through, keep the course's convention in mind: figures are written with slashes (6/5, 4/3, 4/2) because the hyphen has a different job (a suspension — unit 14). (interactive lesson, ~5 min)
• Diatonic Seventh Chords — musictheory.net, Lesson 46 — builds the seventh chord on every scale degree, in major and minor. Read the major-scale half with the chapter's regression in hand: the chord on ^7 must come out half-diminished (viiø7). The lesson's minor-key material previews unit 11 — browse it or save it; it isn't assessed this week. (interactive lesson, ~7 min)

③ Train the ear

Maps to the studio — the quality-sort rounds, at your own pace, with headphones.

• Chord Ear Training — musictheory.net — the site plays a chord, you name its quality. Open the settings gear and switch on the seventh chords alongside the triads; five minutes a day this week and the studio's "name the seven" round will feel like a rerun. (interactive exercise, self-paced)

Pick-one quick path (≈15 min total)

Short on time this week? You've read the chapter — then do exactly these two:

1. Click through Seventh Chords (Lesson 45) in group ①.
2. Run ten rounds of Chord Ear Training in group ③ with seventh chords switched on.

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move pages. If a link fails, tell Professor Hemsworth and lean on the chapter in the meantime — it covers everything the quiz covers.