Chord & FretDmaj7 · Ukulele
Play a plain D. Nice — but ground-floor nice. Now hit play: Dmaj7 is the same house with high ceilings.
Listen first
What you just heard
Here's the curious part: C#, the new note, lives a half step from D — that close, it should grind. And it does. But F# and A hold the room, so the grind turns into shimmer instead of a fight. Go back to the audio and catch the arpeggio note by note all the way to the last note and wait: you'll feel the spark without the fire. It's tension, domesticated — which is why it sounds expensive.
Now it's your hands' turn
On the ukulele, the high reentrant G makes every shape light — and with four strings, every note is exposed. So go with the first position below; the position marked with ⭐ is the easiest to play. Then do the before-and-after: D, then Dmaj7. The second is the first one after sunset. Run it a few times: this chord tends to feel odd on the first pass and addictive by the third.
1 more shape of this chord on the neck
Part of over 200,000 voicings and inversions in Chord & Fret Pro — see and play every one.
Precision Tuner — Before you play these shapes, get in tune — chromatic tuner and reference tones · open in Chord & Fret
The mid-neck positions are the favorites of anyone backing a singer: up there, a maj7 turns into carpet. File that away for the day you play with someone.
Every shape of Dmaj7 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. No ads, no trackers.
Left-handed? Mirror's right here
What is Dmaj7?
Dmaj7: D Major with Major Seventh. The notes are D, F#, A, C# (fixed-do: Re, Fa#, La, Do#) — the degrees 1–3–5–7.
Where this chord lives
Across keys, Dmaj7 works as Imaj7 in D major, VImaj7 in F# minor, IVmaj7 in A major — almost always the deluxe I or the elegant IV. It was bossa nova's signature and became the world's: today it shows up from jazz to indie without asking permission.
Transpose & Capo — Need it in another key? Move the whole chart and find the easiest capo · try it in Chord & Fret
Identify Chord — Found a shape on your own fretboard? The app names it back · see it in Chord & Fret
Where it tends to go
Treating Dmaj7 as the home chord (I) of its key, it tends to go 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 improvising, D Ionian (D E F# G A B C# · 1 2 3 4 5 6 7: the plain major scale, where everything starts); D Lydian (D E F# G# A B C# · 1 2 3 #4 5 6 7: the major scale with a raised fourth — one extra step of daydream); D Lydian ♯2 (D E# F# G# A B C# · 1 #2 3 #4 5 6 7: a lydian with a raised second, harmonic-major color) wrap the whole chord. And the jazz shapes at the end are the same four notes spread across the neck, for the day you want to sound like an arranger.
D Ionian
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 Ionian 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 Dmaj7 as home, the D Ionian scale fits entirely — 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:
- Bm7 — Relative minor (vi) — same tonic function
- Gbm7 — Mediant (iii) — tonic function
Reharmonize — Want richer substitutions? Reharmonize the progression in a tap · use 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 · open in Chord & Fret
And when the song wants solid ground again, the way back is short: plain D. Drop the seventh, close the window — the house is still there.