page_title: Dominant seventh chord
section_title: Related chords
hierarchical_section_title: Dominant seventh chord / Related chords
caption_attribution_description: English: Just harmonic seventh chord on C.
context_page_description: In music theory, a dominant seventh chord, or major minor seventh chord, is a seventh chord, usually built on the fifth degree of the major scale, and composed of a root, major third, perfect fifth, and minor seventh. Thus it is a major triad together with a minor seventh, denoted by the letter name of the chord root and a superscript "7". An example is the dominant seventh chord built on G, written as G⁷, having pitches G–B–D–F:
  Dominant seventh chords contain a strong dissonance, a tritone between the chord's third and seventh.
  Dominant seventh chords are often built on the fifth scale degree of a key. For instance, in the key of C major, the note G is the fifth of the key, and the seventh chord built on G is the dominant seventh chord, G⁷. In this chord, F is a minor seventh above G and is also called the dominant seventh with respect to G. In roman numeral analysis, G⁷ would be represented as V⁷ in the key of C major.
  The dominant seventh is perhaps the most important of the seventh chords. It was the first seventh chord to appear regularly in classical music.
context_section_description: The dominant seventh is enharmonically equivalent to the German sixth. For example, the German sixth A♭–C–E♭–F♯ (which typically resolves to G) is equivalent to the dominant seventh A♭–C–E♭–G♭ (which typically resolves to D♭):
  The dominant seventh chord is frequently used to approximate a harmonic seventh chord, which is one possible just tuning, in the ratios 4:5:6:7 Play , for the dominant seventh. Others include 20:25:30:36 Play , found on I, and 36:45:54:64, found on V, used in 5-limit just tunings and scales.
  Today, the dominant seventh chord enjoys particular prominence in the music of barbershop quartets, with the Barbershop Harmony Society describing the chord as the "signature" of the barbershop sound. A song may use the chord type (built on any scale degree, not just ), for up to 30 percent of its duration. As barbershop singers strive to harmonize in just intonation to maximize the audibility of harmonic overtones, the practical sonority of the chord tends to be that of a harmonic seventh chord. This chord type has become so ingrained into the fabric of the artform that it is often referred to as the "barbershop seventh chord" by those who practice it.
caption: Just harmonic seventh chord on C About this soundPlay just (help·info). 7th: 968.826 cents, a septimal quarter tone lower than B♭.
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