home \ courses  \ music theory III \ page 8

A quick word on 9, 11, 13

It does not stop at 4. You can have five or more tones in a chord. On guitar you normally play four or five tones (max 6!). Those tones are a selection of the most important tones of the chord you want to play. Sometimes tones are doubled, sometimes tones are ommited.

A "9-chord" is a chord with a dominant seventh and a ninth. C9 is: C-E-G-Bb-D.

A "11-chord" is a chord with a dominant sevnth, a ninth and an eleventh. C11 is: C-E-G-Bb-D-F

Finally, A "13-chord" is a chord with a dominant seventh, a nineth, an eleventh and a thirteenth. C13 is: C-E-G-Bb-D-F-A

Normally you do not play all tones. E.g. to play a C13, you choose to play C-E-Bb-A, just a selection of the tones.

This also explains why a C6 is different than a 13. The 6 is the same as the 13: the A.
However in C6 you only add the A, in C13 you add the A, and can choose to add a 7, 9 or 11 aswell.

Sometimes you only want e.g. the ninth, without the seventh. In that case you "add" the ninth to the chord. You write "ad.", as abbreviation if "added" before the 9:

• C9 = C-E-G-Bb-D
• Cad.9 = C-E-G-D

the same rule as with seventh chotds applies: nothing means dominant: C7 means C dominant 7. C9 means C9 with a dominant 7, etc.

If you do not want the seventh to be dominant (that is a minor sevent), you indicate that in the chord name:

• Cmaj9 = C-E-G-B-D
• Cm9 = C-Eb-G-Bb-D

By now you understand that there is a lot to know about chords, scales, intervals, and so on. What is written in these three parts of the course is just a fraction of what is out there. However, you do not need to know everything. What you do need, is to understand the basics. All other things will come in time. Just keep on playing, and you'll learn more about the theory behind it.

This theory course has one more part: more about scales. In the first part we only lookes at major and minor scales. In the next part we'll look at pentatonics (blues scales), harmonic minor, melodic minor, diminished, octotonic and locrian scales.

<<< Previous page   |   Home