In most of the music you’ll play, each chord will have only three notes. The average song includes only basic major triads and minor triads. And occasionally, you might see a few augmented triads and diminished chords. But for the most part, musicians keep it simple … and they stick with the major chords and minor chords we know and love.

But every once in a while (especially in jazz music), you might also see bigger, fancier chords. And these larger groups of notes are called “extended” chords.

Extended chords are nice because they make things more interesting. They might not be used quite as often, but they sound pretty cool. So they’re definitely good to know. We play extended chords by taking basic triads and “extending” them … that is, by adding more notes on top.

For example, do you remember how we first played the C major triad? We built that chord by hitting every other note of the C major scale. Well, if we were keep going (adding a seventh note to the group), we’d come up with what’s called the “C major seventh” chord. Get it?

(We could also build even bigger chords by adding more and more notes—like “ninth” chords … “eleventh” chords … and “thirteenth” chords. But because seventh chords sound better and are easier to play, those bigger chords are much less common.)

Anyway … by adding seventh chords to our toolbox, we suddenly have way more options. For example, check out the “C majorseventh,” “C dominant seventh,” and “C minor seventh” chords below. Like their cousins, the basic triads, these seventh chords include just a few notes … and each one is easy to play. You can tell them all apart by their different intervals and special name labels:

Just like before, musicians label each chord with special little symbols … to tell each one apart: And again, there isn’t a standard set of chord symbols in music. So you might see a few different labels from time to time. For example, check out the following chord labels. Each one is pretty common … but they all mean the same thing:

With four notes each (instead of three), these chords are a little more work for our fingers. But with some practice, that’s no problem. In fact, they’re all easy to play once you try them a few times. And because the dominant seventh chord is especially popular in music, let’s check it out in each key. That way, our fingers will get stronger … and we can take on the next few songs….