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If you're curious about the Cmaj7 piano chord, you are probably exploring pop music and jazz, for that is where you will find that chord the most. It has a sweet, sometimes bittersweet quality that is hard to forget once you have heard it. Kids will say that it sounds "sugary."
It is a chord of the modern era, for you won't find it that often in popular music before the 1930's. As time progressed, it became a veritable substitute for the rather "churchy" C major chord. Of course, one can find examples as far back as Bach, who used it famously in the eighth bar of his C major Prelude from the Well Tempered Klavier.
To find out more about this piano chord, you must go back one step. Cmaj7 is a rather advanced four note chord, and is based on the simplest of three note chords, C major.
Here is a C major chord:
G
E
C
It is three keys stacked on top of each other, like books.
Here is the Cmaj7 chord:
B
G
E
C
You can see that it is the same arrangement as the C major chord but with an additional fourth note, B, placed on top. Notice the C is always on the bottom of both chords.
In your study of chords, it is best to start with the construction of three note chords (triads) before you move on to "seventh" chords, or four note chords.
If you are playing in the key of C, a Cmaj7 chord will consist of all white keys.
The chord reached its heyday in the 1950's and 1960's in the era of the modern crooner, for the chord has a romantic, fairy-tale sweet quality.
By the 1970's, it had been relegated to "elevator music" except for the Broadway theater, which has embraced it permanently and perhaps now partly defines the "Broadway" sound of theater music post 1970.
Post 2000, it appears in a lot of pop music, especially singers like Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift. In general, the chords of this era are frequently altered, that is, notes are substituted and left out constantly so the effect is never of a "standard" three note chord. Many times the middle note of the C chord is left out to give a more open sound.
Exploring these types of advanced chords is made easier for total beginners if you number the piano keys, rather than attempt to read complex seventh chords from sheet music.
Here's a link to an online piano where you can try out the Cmaj7 chord on a numbered keyboard. No musical skill is required at all to explore various types of chords if your keyboard is numbered. http://pianoiseasy2.com/dictionaryCmaj7.html
John Aschenbrenner is the author of the Piano By Number system for kids.
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