Major 7 chord sounds like a triad

• Aug 18, 2024 - 09:50

There are several ways to denote a C major 7 chord:

Cmaj7 (Real Book ed. 5, Library of Musicians)
CMA7 (New Real Book, Hal Leonard Real Jazz Standards)
CM7 (Jazz Fake Book)
C∆7 (Great Gig Book or Blue Book)
C∆ (Colorado Cook Book, Jamey Aebersold Jazz Play Along)

These all should sound like a major chord with the natural 7. Musescore does this correctly, except for the last one, which I happen to prefer as a Jazz musician. The last one sounds like a triad in my Musescore, which is incorrect, in my opinion. (I'm using Musescore 3). Do you agree? Can I change that somewhere in the program?


Comments

Option 1: https://musescore.org/en/project/replace-chord-symbols
Option 2: As jazz musician you may like the attached plugin that gives you voicings rather than plain chords. Copy a lead sheet to a piano score and run the plugin. It uses ‘my’ (Mark Levine) style of chord symbols, e.g. C for CMaj
See https://musescore.org/en/node/345847 for discussion on this.
See https://musescore.org/en/project/satb-style-lead-sheet-harmonizer for a list of supported chord symbols.
WriteHarmonyVoicings4.qml

In reply to by HunGrYforMuSiK

Thank you. This delta sign issue is interesting. It seems like the sign in chord theory originally meant a triad (each side of the sign a note in the chord), then specifically a major triad, and then a major interval. These kinds of shifts or changes in meaning are not uncommon but often they complicate things. However, I have earlier read the sign as only meaning a major seventh.

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

MarcSabatella commented on Mar 20, 2023
Some people use it to mean major triad, others to mean major seventh.

RichardJECooke commented on Mar 20, 2023
I have never seen in any real book, nor heard from any jazz player, nor read in the Jazz Piano book, nor seen anywhere on the web on theory websites that delta means major triad.

This last sentence is exactly my position. @MarcSabatella: Who used it to mean major triad?

∆ and ∆7 is the same and should sound like a major 7 chord, as do the variants M7, MA7, maj7.

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