Chord Names and Their Meanings

Everyone knows it. The “D minor7 ^2 flat9 sharp11 divided by 13.”
Of course, there is no chord with this name. But at first, it may seem like it.

What may seem extremely difficult and like a mathematical formula at first is actually just a chord name.

Imagine my name is now Rob18689. It looks extreme, but it’s just my first name (Rob), my height in cm (186), and my year of birth (1989). The same applies to C7#9. It’s a C major triad with a minor seventh and an augmented ninth (9).

The Question Is, How Do You Play It?

In another blog post, we already dealt with the different endings. Not really dealt with, but listed them: Intervals.

Let’s start with C7#9 and take this chord apart a bit.

The Individual Parts of the Chord

First, we just take the letter “C.” If it were minor, it would say Cm7#9. If there is no “m” or “-” immediately after the letter, it is major. That means we already have the intervals 1, 3, 5 (these are the intervals of a major chord. More on that under Arpeggios).

Next (immediately after the letter “C”), comes a 7. This number tells us which interval is included in the chord in addition to the major chord. In this case, a seventh. There are different sevenths. For example, we have the major and the minor seventh. In this case, it is the minor seventh.

To play a major seventh, it would say CMaj7#9.

The “Maj7” stands for the seventh here and means that the seventh is major instead of minor. But there is no Maj7, so we assume a minor 7.

And the last thing we see is a #9. This “sharp” symbol also refers directly to the next number, namely the 9. By the way, in music, we say “sharp” to the sharp symbol. So neither diamond nor hashtag. 🙂 In German, it is also called “Kreuz” (cross), although it actually looks less like a cross and much more like a diamond.

Summary of Intervals
C = C major = 1 3 5
Cm = C minor = 1 b3 5
C7 = C dominant 7 = 1 3 5 b7
CMaj7 = C major 7 = 1 3 5 7

C7#9 = 1 3 5 b7 #9
etc.

The Major Scale

Here we see the C major scale, which goes beyond an octave.
!Attention, these are not the correct tensions of the C major chord!
It merely serves as a visual representation of the chord extensions!

With this list and the chord-interval knowledge, it should now be possible to “design” any chord yourself. So I can now simply move these notes back and forth. Then the intervals change, and the chord gets the most impossible names. However, you should make sure that you always keep an eye on the “root chord.” So e.g., produce 1–3–5 and not weird things like #1, b3, b5. Not that it’s forbidden, it just might sound a bit weird at first. 🙂

That means I now know that a C major chord contains a 1 (R = Root), a 3, and a 5. So I now play these three notes together. The first problem, however, is that the 3 and the 5 are on the same string and therefore cannot be played together. So I have to look for alternatives to bring them to different strings.

This would be a possible example of how to play a C major chord. Instead of playing the number 5 on the same string as the number 3, we look for a note on a different string so that we can easily play all three notes together. We have already dealt several times with how and whether you can simply move notes in a chord to another string: Triads and Inversions and Different Ways to Play a Chord.

Back to C7#9

Now we have a list of the “major and perfect” intervals and the knowledge of which ones we need for our particular chord. How do I put it all together on my guitar now?

For the sake of clarity, I have crossed out all the notes that are not useful and only kept those that we need for the chord. It looks something like this:

The intervals in the above example are: 1, 3, 7, 9. But what we need is: 1, 3, 5, b7, #9.

What happened to the 5? It is said that the 5 (fifth) can be omitted without any problems. The reason is, it’s meaningless. Neither major nor minor, nor anything else is conveyed about the fifth. That’s why it can simply be omitted. However, you shouldn’t just leave it out if it’s explicitly mentioned in the chord, like in a minor7b5.

Now I move the remaining intervals to their desired position, and tada, the chord actually sounds as desired. This chord is, by the way, the famous “Hendrix Chord.” He played it mainly on E instead of C, so you can let the open E string resonate.

Then results:

Now exactly what we have done with the C7#9 can be done with all other chords as well.

Pick a funny chord and try to break this chord down into its individual parts and put it back together using the intervals. After that, all you have to do is put together a suitable voicing, and the chord is done.