The chorus of Bread by If uses a vi♯7 chord, and i♯7 and iv♯7 are available in harmonic minor and phrygian dominant, but I can’t figure out how to access any beyond those three.
Searching for f#m/E# produces no results. The only ones I can find by searching are the aforementioned i♯7 and iv♯7.
How can the rest be entered? How was this vi♯7 entered?
not a music theory person - but wouldn’t a “sharp seventh” (in some cases might be called “augmented”) be enharmonically equivalent to an octave?
Only for I and IV in major (III and VI in minor). All other diatonic chords have a minor seventh. I’m specifically looking for minor chords with a ♯7.
EDIT: I guess these are also known as minor major seventh chords, and a more common notation is probably mM7 or mΔ7.
Side note - I found another song with one, Something by The Beatles. Still a vi though.
yes, minor chords can have a major 7th as well as a minor 7th.
In the standard diatonic modes, there are only minor minor 7ths. In the harmonic minor scale, there is one minor major 7th. There are only two harmonic minor modes available in Hookpad, so only two minor major 7th chords are accessible. How does one find the other 10?
you get them by switching to a different key and then entering iv♯7 or i♯7, and then switching back to your desired key (using the relative option). Can take a bit of trial and error.
For example, to get a vi♯7 in F Major, you’d switch to A Phrygian (the relative Phrygian), enter iv♯7 , and then switch back to the relative major (which of course is F major).
Nice, that works, thanks! I’d forgotten there was a relative option there.
I wasn’t sure at first that all of them were accessible in this way, but switching back and forth between relative and parallel caused some flats to show up. I’ll have to play around with it some more but I think I can find them all now with a bit of fiddling.
To make this a little more explicit and hopefully eliminate the trial and error, this is what worked for me:
For example, I was just trying to get cmM7 in Bb major. A fifth up from C is D, so I switched to the relative mode of Bb major with base pitch D (in this case, D minor). I grabbed iv#7, or cmM7, and switched back.
What I still don’t know is what to do if the root isn’t in your preferred original mode. For instance, if I wanted bmM7 for some reason, would I have been totally out of luck?
That is unnecessarily complicated. You can easily get a mM7 chord on any diatonic scale degree by simply switching the key to the corresponding relative mode and borrowing the tonic seventh chord from Harmonic Minor. So to get a cmM7 in Bb Major you just switch the key to C Dorian and borrow cmM7 from Harmonic Minor. Also in which universe is D a fifth up from C?
You can access mM7 chords on non-diatonic scale degrees by switching the key to any parallel mode that has this scale degree and then repeating the process above. So to get a cbmM7 (which is enharmonically equivalent to bmM7) in Bb Major, you switch the key to A# Phrygian, then B Lydian and borrow bmM7 from Harmonic Minor.
Thank you, that is a little bit easier and it’s good to know how to get other mM7 chords! (D was a typo, obviously I meant G.)
Was this patched?? It’s not working anymore.
I’m in Bb minor trying to get an Ammaj7 chord
It’s working OK for me. I
*highlighted a bar
*changed it to the parallel Bb major
*changed it to the relative A locrian
*entered an A chord
*changed it to harmonic minor and made it a 7th chord, obtaining amM7
*changed back to relative Bb major
*changed back to parallel Bb minor
*deleted the key change
I must be doing something wrong still…
What’s happening when you try it? Could you share a screenshot of where you’re getting stuck, maybe?
As requested, here’s a screen capture of the process:
The drop-down menu for selecting mode doesn’t show up in the recording, but it should be clear enough what’s going on there. At the very end, to delete the key changes, I’m just selecting the small boxes and hitting backspace.
Just to repeat what @SilentPaaw said above: since A is non-diatonic in Bb minor, I had to first switch to a parallel mode that has A (in this case, Bb major), then switch to the relative mode of Bb major that has A as the tonic (in this case, A locrian). Unless you have your modes memorized, the second step might take a tiny bit of trial and error.
Thank you so much for this!!
