Skip to main content

Extended Chords

Lesson 13 from: Music Theory Essentials: Chords, Scales and Modes

Tomas George

buy this class

$00

$00
Sale Ends Soon!

starting under

$13/month*

Unlock this classplus 2200+ more >

Lesson Info

13. Extended Chords

<b>In this lesson, you will learn about extended chords.</b>
Next Lesson: Suspended Chords

Lesson Info

Extended Chords

OK. Now we're going to have a look at extended cords. So an extended chord is basically adding more notes past the seventh chord. We get a few different ones. We get 1/9 we get an 11th and we get 1/13 chord. So let's start with the ninth. If we go up our major scale starting on C we have 1234567, then it repeats back to one. But the easiest way to think of this is to call 18. So we have 12345678. Then above this, we have 9, 1011, 1213. Then we don't actually get any chords above 13th because they'll actually loop round and round if you remember our seventh chords. So I'm just going to play ac major seventh. So we have the C, the roots, the third, which is E the fifth, which is G, the seventh, which is a B. If we stack another third on top of that, we will get 1/9 another third. On top of that, we will get an 11th, another third. On top of that, we will get 1/ and another third on top of that, we will get back to sea. Actually, it will loop round and round. So that's as far as we can go...

is 1/13. The reason we call these notes 911 and 13 rather than 24 and six, it's just because we're stacking these above the note, they're going above the seventh. Of course, with Avers, it's not necessarily going to be above some of the notes. So the easiest way to think of it is an octave above the root note. So 1/9 for example, think of this as the ninth scale degree rather than the second. So let's just have a look at one of the chords, for example, C major nine. So the C major, this refers to the core part of the chord. So this is the ce the G and also the B the seventh is the core part of the chord. And then the nine, this refers to this note above which is the ninth, which is ad so it's basically just stacking on another third on top and then of course, an 11th is stacking another third on top of that. So it'll be this note here which is an F and the 13th is stacking on another note above this as well, which will give us this a, we don't have to play all of these notes in the chord. So if you're playing 1/13 note, we don't have to play 1234567 notes, we can remove a few of them, but we'll talk about this a bit later on. We do have different types of ninths, 11th and 13th. So we can get a sharp knife or a flat knife. An 11th will be a sharp 11th or a flat 11th. And the 13th can also be a sharp 13th or a flat 13th. So the default for a nine is a major nine and this is actually the same note for a major and a minor scale. So if I play ac major seven chord and I add on the nine, because the N scale degree of C major is ad and now I'm just going to play C minor. This is AC minus seven and the N scale degree of C minor to this note as well. So the nine is actually the same for major and minor going up to the 11th. This is actually the same as 1/4 really? So the fourth is a perfect fourth. It's called a perfect fourth because it's the same for a major and a minor scale. So I'm just going to play C major nine now and then add this note here. 11. I'm just going to change this to ac minor nine and then we add the 11th. It's the same note. It's a perfect fourth. Essentially, it's an 11th the 13th though it is different for major and minor. So it is a semitone lower for minor and the semitone higher for major, but you probably won't be using the 13th that often. But just remember the ninth and the 11th is the same for major and minor. But the 13th is different for major and minor. So there's a few ways you can work them out. When you're playing these chords, you might not need to have all of the notes when you're playing an extended chord. For example, this chord here, this uh C major 13, we're playing a lot of notes playing seven different notes. So say you wanna play this chord, but you don't want to play all of the notes. A few things you could do is have the bass note, play the bass, you can remove the bass and you could even remove the fifth. The fifth is the same for major and minor and isn't always needed. So you could play this chord with the bass being played on a bass instrument. So maybe you can remove the fifth. So I'm just going to play ac major seven chord and now I see minus seven chord. But if I remove the fifth, so here's ac major seven chord with the fifth removed and here's ac minor called with the fifth. Remove. You can still tell it's a major seventh and a minor seventh chord because the fifth is the same for both of them. The third and the seventh are the most important. So if you're gonna play any extended chords, make sure you're always leave in the third and the seventh because this will give you the harmony, this will give you the backbone of the chord. But for some of the other notes, I recommend just use your ear have some musical judgments, but remember to leave the third and the seventh. So let's just go over extended chords again. So this is really where you add on more notes above the seventh. So you have your root, you have your third, you have your fifth, you have your seventh, then we're just adding more thirds on top of this to extend the harmony all the way up to 13. After 13, it loops round, but you can get 1/9 11th and 1/13 chord. So I do recommend experimenting with these extended chords, but it's not always essential to play every note in these extended chords. So you can substitute some of them, but always leave the third and the seventh. Let's just go to the score editor now and if you write on notes, we're just going to be stacking them above. So this, I'm actually stacking to make a uh 1/13 chord. So all we're really doing is stacking the notes above, inferred to create some extended chords. So that's extended chords and that's how you can build them. So thank you for watching this lecture and I'll see you in the next one.

RELATED ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES