It’s easy if you think of a pianist playing notes with their left and right hands. The simplest way to change the voicing of a chord is to separate the notes in different octaves. Practice spelling out different types of chords as you play or write to help you get a handle on it. The unique set of notes that identifies a chord is called its spelling.Ī chord with the same spelling has the same letter name and quality, even if the order of notes is jumbled up or separated by octaves. To do that, you need to remember the names of the notes that make up that chord.
To change the voicing, you have to rearrange the order of the notes or change their spacing. Here’s a root position C major triad to help you visualize it: That’s when a chord is written as a group of thirds stacked up directly on top of each other. The most basic voicing for any chord is called close root position. When you write for a group of instruments or even a single harmonic instrument like the guitar or piano you need to choose your voicings to fit the song, arrangement and playing style of the music. What are chord voicings?Ĭhord voicing refers to the order of the individual voices within a chord, the color tones added, which chord tones are doubled or omitted and the spacing and octave position of each note.Ĭhoosing good voicings is an important aspect of music arranging and composition. In this article I’ll explain what chord voicings are, how they work and the best ways to use them in your music. They’re the fine details that give each new chord in a progression its own personality. The secret to interesting chords is good chord voicings. How you put them together and arrange them into progressions are important choices you’ll make while writing a song.Įven if you’re just getting started with music theory, you probably already know a handful of basic chords.īut if you’ve ever tried to learn one of your favourite songs note-for-note, you know that many of the best sounding chords go beyond the basic shapes. Play this progression to get a sense of the suspended sound.Chords are the basic building blocks of your songs. In the key of C the V chord is a G chord. You will usually see a sus chord functioning as the V chord in a given key because it gives a sense of delayed resolution. A sus chord refers to a triad or 7th chord whose 3rd degree is raised to the 4th degree. There is the exception of a sus chord (suspended) or a 6th chord. We name these tones specifically because they change the sound and makeup of the chord itself. When we refer to a 9th, 11th, or 13th in the context of a chord, we’re referring to the extensions above the common structure of a triad or 7th chord. The same goes for a 12th (same as the 5th) or 14th (same as the 7th), etc. When we play a tenth above a given chord, it does nothing to change the chord itself. A tenth refers to an interval rather than a chord tone. This is because a tenth above a chord is the same as the 3rd degree of the associated scale of that chord. This is where we derive the tones 9, 11, and 13 from.īefore we delve any further, a common question I hear is why we don’t refer to a chord with the tenth degree included (in this case E) as a Cmaj10 chord. If we were to count up another note, we would arrive at 9 and so on. The first note C is 8 notes away from the next C above or below it, hence the word octave (octo means 8 in Latin). In the key of C we have 7 notes, after the 7th note B, we arrive back at the octave C, which is the root. We’ll stick with the key of C as it’s a little easier to understand because it has a key signature without any sharps or flats. Extending these 7th chords even further is where we enter the realm of 9ths, 11ths, and 13ths.įirst, let’s clear up where these numbers come from.
#Notea that make up 9th and 11th chords how to#
In my previous article “ 7th Chords: What are they and how to play the, on the guitar” I discussed how we can extend many of the simple chord shapes we know and turn them into 7th chords. This article seeks to clear up some of these terms and show beginning guitarists how they can begin to play and incorporate “Jazz” chords into their repertoire. In case, you are unsure about your notes on the guitar fretboard, I strongly recommend you to read my earlier post on: “ How to find & memorise the notes on the guitar fretboard like a pro“.ħth chords may seem a bit more familiar, but this too is really just an extension of a triad.
When someone talks about a 9th or an 11th, they’re referring to the notes that “extend” above the common structure of a triad. The terms “Jazz chords, extensions, flat 9, sharp 11, or 13th” can often feel a bit scary to comprehend.
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