Chord Quality
Chord quality refers to the unique sound and emotional character of a chord, shaped by the intervals between its notes. Chords with different qualities can sound bright, dark, tense, or stable — even when built from the same root note.
The most common chord qualities in popular music are major, minor, diminished, and augmented. More advanced chords, like seventh chords, add a fourth note to introduce even more variation.
A major chord is built by stacking two intervals: a major third (4 semitones) and then a minor third (3 semitones). This structure gives major chords a bright, stable sound.
A minor chord inverts that structure — it starts with a minor third (3 semitones) followed by a major third (4 semitones), producing a more somber or introspective tone.
Below, you can compare the notes of a C major and D minor chord, showing how their interval structure affects their quality:
Chords can be extended by adding a fourth note on top — the seventh — which introduces new harmonic colors and tensions. These are called seventh chords, and their quality depends on the intervals between all four notes.
Just like triads, seventh chords come in different types depending on how the third, fifth, and seventh relate to the root. For example, a minor seventh chord contains a minor third and a minor seventh, while a dominant seventh has a major third and a minor seventh — creating a distinctive tension often used in cadences.
The table below summarizes the triad and seventh chord qualities that appear naturally in the major scale. Each row shows the chord built on a different scale degree:
| Chord | Quality | Seventh Chord | Quality |
|---|---|---|---|
| I | Major | I7 | Major seventh |
| ii | Minor | ii7 | Minor seventh |
| iii | Minor | iii7 | Minor seventh |
| IV | Major | IV7 | Major seventh |
| V | Major | V7 | Dominant seventh |
| vi | Minor | vi7 | Minor seventh |
| vii˚ | Diminished | viiø7 | Half-diminished seventh |
Click below to hear how a C chord can take on different qualities — including major, minor, diminished, and their seventh chord variations:
Other Chord Qualities: Augmented and Fully Diminished
While the chords above all come from the major scale (or related modes), other more unusual chord qualities appear in popular music — especially when altered chords are used for color or tension.
Two important altered chord types are:
- Augmented chords, which sound unstable and bright
- Fully diminished seventh chords, which sound tense and dramatic
Augmented Chords
An augmented chord is a major chord with a raised fifth. This gives it an expanded, unstable sound — often described as dreamy, mysterious, or tense. Augmented chords are labeled with a + symbol to reflect the altered fifth.
For example, a standard G major chord contains the notes G, B, and D. In a G augmented chord, the D is raised to D♯:
Because of their symmetry and ambiguity, augmented chords aren’t always used within traditional functional harmony. Instead, they often appear in songs as “color chords” — adding drama, contrast, or a sudden shift in mood.
For example, the intro to ABBA’s Mamma Mia alternates between a regular I chord and an augmented I+ chord for a quirky and unstable sound:
Another common use is the V+ chord, which intensifies the pull toward the I chord. In a typical V chord, scale degree 7 resolves upward to 1. But in V+, the raised fifth (♯2) also resolves upward to 3, creating a strong and satisfying resolution.
Randy Newman’s You've Got a Friend in Me uses a V+7 chord to great effect — its jazzy flavor and strong forward motion give the progression a lot of character:
Other songs that use augmented chords
Click on the following songs to see their chords and melody in the TheoryTab database.
Fully Diminished Seventh Chords
The vii˚ chord in a major key is a diminished triad built from scale degrees 7, 2, and 4. When extended into a seventh chord, it usually becomes a viiø7 — a half-diminished seventh chord.
The half-diminished seventh includes a diminished triad plus a minor seventh above the root. In the key of C, that gives us the notes B, D, F, and A:
Half-diminished chord: Bø7
This chord is tense and unstable, but not as intense as the fully diminished seventh chord. In a fully diminished chord, all the notes are spaced by minor thirds, including the seventh — which becomes a diminished seventh interval (9 semitones instead of 10).
Fully diminished chord: Bo7
This tight interval spacing gives the chord a more intense and dramatic sound. It often shows up in minor keys when composers use the harmonic minor scale — which raises scale degree 7 to strengthen resolution to the tonic.
For example, in A minor, raising G to G♯ turns the viiø7 chord into a fully diminished viio7 chord (G♯, B, D, F). You can hear this effect in ABBA’s The Day Before You Came, which opens with a dramatic viio7 chord:
Fully diminished seventh chords also appear as applied chords — acting as temporary leading chords to other targets. While not as common as V or IV of a chord, applied vii˚7 chords still show up frequently and are especially popular in jazz and musical theater.
Both You've Got a Friend in Me and The Day Before You Came use these types of applied viio7 chords to create momentary tension before resolving elsewhere — like viio7/V, viio7/♯vi, or viio7/♭VI.
Songs that use fully diminished seventh chords
Click on the following songs to see their chords and melody in the TheoryTab database.
