Diatonic Seventh Chords

Diatonic seventh chords are a good thing to understand, especially for chord progression analysis. They are just a seventh chord built on each scale degree of whatever key a song is in. These chords can then be arranged to create a chord progression. Also including other non-diatonic chords such as secondary dominants or modal interchange chords can really spice up chord progressions.

Here are the diatonic chords of C major:



It's important to realize that whenever labeling diatonic chords, one must use roman numerals instead of regular numbers. Often (especially in classical music) minor chords will be lower case roman numerals and major will be upper case, however, I will always use upper case roman numerals with chord symbols on this website.


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