Denoting chord qualities with capitalisation

I somehow got in my head that back many years ago I regularly saw chords being distinguished by online tabs via the capitalisation of the letter. So a “C7” would be a C major with a seventh and a “c7” would be a C minor with a seventh. I also vaguely remember reading somewhere that “real musicians” are against this. These days, I don’t see that anymore, instead I see “CM/Cm” or “CMaj/CMin”. I’m beginning to wonder if my memory is wrong.
Is anyone here familiar with the capitalisation-system and have you ever heard “real musicians” opinionate on it?

1 Like

I only know the usage of uppercase / lowercase to give the exact pitch of the note.
So a C is a specific key on the piano, and the lowercase c is one octave above.
The next one would be the c’, then c’’ (that one might be a German thing?)

That is why guitar tunings are often shown like this: E-A-d-g-b-e

1 Like

I am taking lessons with an instructor, and he is teaching C7, Cmaj7, Cmin7, which denote how the chords are created from the C Scale. C7 is a dominant 7th built from the major chords with a flat 7 (b7). Cmaj7 is major chord with major 7 (M7), the Cmin7 is minor chords with minor 7 (m7). Translated to practice that would be:

C7 (C dominant 7) – C, E, G, Bb
Cmaj7 (C major 7) – C, E, G, B
Cmin7 (C minor 7) – C, Eb, G, Bb

We are actually in the process of working on this now, and I was very confused in the beginning. I really had to concentrate on learning the intervals (major and minor intervals) to understand how the chords were being constructed. The notation above is what I am used to people using now.

1 Like

Yes - lower case is used in different ways, and always to indicate minor chords.
I’ve seen this before in regular chord notation, but it’s very tricky because of letters like “C” which is the same shape, just different sizes, and in handwritten charts becomes a complete mystery.

The most common capital / lowercase - major / minor delineation I’ve seen and used is in roman numeral chord chart making.
This is old school classical-meets-jazz, and it’s nice for describing chords without a fixed key.

I (capital roman numeral 1) = major 1 chord
ii-7 = 2 minor seven
iii - 3 minor triad
IV - capital 4 = major 4 triad
V9 - capital 5 = dominant 9 chord from the 5

etc.

There are lots of variations in how to write out the chords.
I like the “min” or the dash to show minor chords.
Just one “m” is too confusing when I’m reading a chart, as I don’t know if it means major or minor.
The capital / lowercase also has problems.

@AnotherJosh outlined some nice best practices above. That’s pretty much the standard out there.

4 Likes