Chord & FretD7 · Cavaquinho
Say this out loud: "once upon a..." — and stop right there. Uncomfortable, isn't it? The sentence is hanging. That discomfort has a sound: D7 is a sentence without a period. Press play down there.
Listen first
What you just heard
Why does it sound unfinished? Inside D7, two notes are arguing: F# and C. Now listen to the arpeggio, one note at a time and catch the second and the last note — the distance between them is the tritone, the tensest interval tonal music knows. D and A keep the house standing while those two argue inside it. And an argument, you know, demands a resolution.
Now it's your hands' turn
On the cavaquinho, four steel strings tuned D–G–B–D pack the chord into a small, bright space — every finger counts. So grab the first position below; the position marked with ⭐ is the easiest to play. Now the experiment that explains this chord better than any explanation: play D7, count to three, then play G. Felt the door close? Do it again. That relief is the reason this chord exists.
2 more shapes of this chord on the neck
Chord & Fret Pro maps over 200,000 voicings and inversions — hear and play them all.
Precision Tuner — Before you play these shapes, get in tune — chromatic tuner and reference tones · open in Chord & Fret
The other positions earn their keep in blues and jazz, where this chord is practically the official language; learn them one at a time.
Every shape of D7 lives in Chord & Fret Pro — 4 instruments, 16 tunings, 41 chord types and 57 scales, in every key. Start free. Unlock everything with Pro. 100% offline. Free to start, no card needed.
Left-handed? Mirror's right here
What is D7?
D7: D Major with Seventh. The notes are D, F#, A, C (fixed-do: Re, Fa#, La, Do) — the degrees 1–3–5–b7.
Where this chord lives
Its job is fixed: D7 is a dominant, and dominants live as VII7 in E minor, V7 in G major. Translation: wherever it shows up, the music is about to move. A chart full of 7th chords is a song that won't sit still.
Transpose & Capo — Need it in another key? Move the whole chart and find the easiest capo · see it in Chord & Fret
Identify Chord — Found a shape on your own fretboard? The app names it back · use it in Chord & Fret
Where it tends to go
Treating D7 as the home chord (I) of its key, it usually moves toward the pre-dominant (Em / G) or the dominant (A / C#°) — and the dominant pulls back home. Typically, not a rule.
When you want to go further
For soloing, D Mixolydian (D E F# G A B C · 1 2 3 4 5 6 b7: the major scale with a lowered seventh — the blues accent); D Lydian dominant (D E F# G# A B C · 1 2 3 #4 5 6 b7: a mixolydian with a raised fourth: the dominant in formalwear) cover the whole chord. And look at the first swap on the list below: that's the famous tritone substitution, a second dominant hiding three whole steps away, the one arrangers reach for when they want to arrive at the same place by a prettier road.
D Mixolydian
4 more scale positions on the neck
Chord & Fret Pro maps over 35,000 mapped scale shapes — hear and play them all.
The same D Mixolydian in its main shapes along the neck — pick whichever position sits under your hand. The rings mark the guide notes (the 3rd and 7th) that carry this chord's color.
Improvising in context
To improvise over D7 as home, the D Mixolydian scale covers it whole — it contains every note of the chord. And when the dominant (A) pulls back, the leading tone C# is the note that wants to resolve home.
Swaps that work:
- Ab7 — Tritone substitution (shared 3rd–7th tritone)
- Am7 — Forms a II–V: precede with this ii
- Ebdim7 — Passing diminished (ascending)
Reharmonize — Want richer substitutions? Reharmonize the progression in a tap · try it in Chord & Fret
The same chord, dressed for jazz
Jazz Lab — Drop 2, drop 3 and shell in any key — the Jazz Lab opens them all · try it in Chord & Fret
You already know how this sentence ends. The period after D7 is called G — go there and close it with your own fingers.