Let me begin by saying that I love major sevenths. My favorite chord in the world is the humble C major seventh. I don't have perfect pitch, so I don't know why it has to be C major seventh and not some other major seventh ... but something about C major seventh just hits me the right way. Resonates, you might say.
And of course I like dominant sevenths. Who doesn't like dominant sevenths?
I even love diminished and half-diminished sevenths. They're intense. They're suspenseful. They have personality, even if they're not kind and friendly the way the major and dominant sevenths are. They have bite.
But minor sevenths?
Ugh.
No, not ugh. Minor sevenths are fine ... in small doses. In context. As a quick stopover before moving on to a dominant seventh a fourth up. As a place to hang out before moving to something more solid.
But taking a month-long deep dive into the minor sevenths?
Ugh.
Let me explain.
Minor sevenths make me sad. Listless. They give me this weird sense of nostalgia, but not the good kind. The kind that looks back on the past and thinks, "It really wasn't that great, was it. It never was great. All of life is hopeless." It makes me think this even though parts of the past have been wonderful!
Why do minor sevenths do this to me? I feel bad about this because it makes me feel like I'm not a real music lover to be so negative about something so basic.
Bad 70s Nostalgia?
Do the minor sevenths remind me of 70s music? I was practicing them and feeling like the world was going to end with a whimper when I decided to (for the first time) play with the "electric piano" settings on my digital piano. I found one titled "Pop EP" that had (to me) a very 70s sound. So I tried it, improvising the blues scale over a 1-4-5 progression (Cm7, Fm7, Gm7) ...
What do y'all think? I think it has kind of a fun, creepy vibe, like you might get at a circus in the 70s when you notice the happy clown has been watching you for far too long.
"Elevator Music"?
I also think it has a bit of an "elevator music" feel.
Maybe that's it. Maybe all these minor sevenths make me think of elevator music. Yes: elevator music combined with 70s electric-piano pop, which I've never been crazy about.
I thought about hurrying through the Minor Sevenths Foundations course at Piano With Jonny this month, just to get it over with, but I'm going to stick with it. My goal for the rest of April (in addition to mastering the exercises) is to try to come to terms with minor sevenths . Perhaps even come to peace with them. To improvise/compose something, maybe, that manages to be based in minor sevenths without sounding lost and listless.
Can I do it? We'll see. For now, we're stuck with my creepy-clown-in-an-elevator song.
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