Lately, we’ve been talking about power chords, tritones, and substitutions.

Today, I want to show you how to use tritones and minor chords to form crazy-sounding dominant ninth chords.

Yes, that means if you know all your tritones (…there’s only really 6 to learn) and all your basic minor triads, then you can play dominant ninth chords — instantly!

But not just any kind of dominant ninth chord. This voicing sounds really good!

As you know, two musicians can play the same dominant chord and make their versions sound totally different. I’m going to give you a “behind-the-scenes” look at how that’s possible.

Here’s the regular C dominant 9 chord:

C E G Bb D

It’s basically a C dominant 7 chord with an added “9″ tone. If you don’t understand where the 9 comes from, read yesterday’s lesson.

There are only two steps to transforming this boring, “standard” ninth chord into a snazzy one!

Step 1: Play the tritone replacement for the dominant chord on your left hand. Remember, you can always substitute the appropriate tritone for a full dominant chord since a tritone utilizes the key tones of the dominant chord. Basically, take the 3rd and 7th tones out of the dominant chord and play them on your left hand. That is a tritone.

Example:

C dominant 9
C + E + G + Bb + D

You’d take out E and Bb and play them together.

* As you probably know, “E” is the third tone of the scale and “Bb” is the flat seventh tone.

So far, my left hand has “E + Bb” in it.

Step 2: After you have determined what tritone to play on your left hand, you’ll want to identify the 5th tone of the chord. You’ll want to play a minor chord off this tone on your right hand. If I’m playing a C9 chord, the 5th tone of C is basically G (which is in the chord). I’m simply going to play a G minor chord on my right hand.

It’s that simple! Find 5th tone of chord (or scale) and play its minor triad. Point blank!

Example:

C dominant 9
C + E + G + Bb + D

*The fifth tone in C major is G. Therefore, I’m going to play a G minor on my right hand: (G + Bb + D)

You can try different inversions of this G minor triad but I prefer first inversion, which means the keynote will always be on top: (Bb + D + G)

Same for the tritone, you can try the alternate inversion but I like my flat seventh on the bottom (Bb + E) but feel free to try the other way around too (”E + Bb”). They both work.

So my full chord looks like this:

C dominant 9
Bb + E on left hand /// Bb + D + G on right hand

If you do use the opposite tritone “E + Bb,” you may find that the “Bb” from your tritone meets the “Bb” from your G minor chord if you’re playing both hands close to each other. This is fine. It actually results in a nice little effect with simply “E” on the left hand and “G minor” on the right hand.

Now here’s the best part.

In gospel music, you can really work this! Try going down a half step and doing the same thing. Then quickly move that chord back up to your original chord.

So basically, take this same exact voicing of C9 and move it down to B9.

If you understand “big picture thinking” (yesterday’s post), this shouldn’t be hard.

What is the tritone that goes with “B?” Bam! That’s your left hand!

What’s the 5th tone of B? Play it’s minor chord in first inversion! Bam!

B dominant 9
A + D# on left hand /// A + C# + F# on right hand

*I’m using informal naming to make it easier to follow

And this B dominant 9 (a.k.a “B9″), which is the same exact chord as C9 (but moved down a half step), leads perfectly to the C9:

B dominant 9
A + D# on left hand /// A + C# + F# on right hand

C dominant 9
Bb + E on left hand /// Bb + D + G on right hand

In fact, if you play gospel music and know the classic “shouting” bass run:

C - E - F - Gb - G - A - Bb - B - C

*It’s a bass line so play each of these notes separately.

…Imagine playing this same dominant 9 voicing over each of these bass notes.

But here’s the thing — with this voicing, you don’t really play the bass. Either you rely on someone else playing the bass or you just play the chords rootless.

Imagine replacing each of those “shouting” bass notes with this dominant 9 voicing?

Try it! You already know the notes for C9 and B9.

Just take the same formula and match up the chords for each of these bass notes. Then practice playing them because it won’t be easy at first. You’ll love what you come up with! Sounds a little crazy at first but this is how top gospel musicians like Jason White and Michael Bereal think.

I hope you enjoyed!

Until next time —

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So you want to play big, fancy chords! Who doesn’t?

And yesterday, I pointed you in the right direction.

We got introduced to polychords, which are essentially big chords made from two or more smaller ones.

So today, we’re going to take it a step further. Rather than stack “common” chords on top of each other, we’re going to see what happens when we venture outside the norm.

For example, if you stack a 5-major chord on top of its 1-major chord (like G major on top of C major), you’ll easily get a major ninth chord:

(C + E + G) + (G + B + D) = C major 9

*G is only played once.

Then, by simply changing one or the other to a minor chord, you’ll get a totally different chord:

C minor + G minor = C minor 9
(C + Eb + G) + (G + Bb + D) = C minor 9

(You can revisit yesterday’s post to catch up if you haven’t)

So, this basic “5-chord over 1-chord” is what I’m calling “common,” for the purposes of this post. Master those and you can pretty much play any ninth chord. In fact, change your five chord to a seventh chord (i.e. - major 7, minor 7, or dominant 7) and that will give you all your 11th chords — even some fancy altered ones.

In fact, if you take a basic 1-major 7 chord (like C major 7) and start experimenting with chords off every tone of the chord, you will find matches that create bigger chords.

Don’t believe me?

Ok, the notes of the C major 7 chord are C+E+G+B. So basically, I’m telling you to play around with chords off “E”… chords off “G” (like we’ve done in prior examples)… and even chords off “B.”

If you take each one of the tones (not including “C”) and play random chords on them, you’ll come across things like this:

C + E minor = C major 7

C + E major = C augmented major 7

C + E diminished = C dominant 7

C + E + G major = C major 9

C + E + G minor = C dominant 9

C + E + G diminished = C dominant 7 (b9) (pronounced “C dominant seventh, flat nine”)

*This is a great 6-chord. Like if you’re in the key of Eb and you’re going from Eb major to C (which is the 6th degree), play this chord and it gives you a nice bluesy feel.

C + E + G + B diminished = C major 11

*You can also try “B major” and “B minor” like I did in the other examples but you’ll get some really altered chords. They are used, but rarely.

Heck, you can even experiment with chords outside of the scale.

Like Ab major over C major (you’ll get a cool altered chord that sounds really good on a 3-chord that progresses to a 4 or 6-chord. Like if you were in the key of Ab major and used this chord to go from C (the 3-chord) to either Db or F (the 4 and 6-chords, respectively).

The good news is that these combinations and possibilities are practically everywhere.

And I believe you should reserve a portion of your practice for what I call, “exploration.” This is where you take proven rules and ideas from this blog and experiment further.

For example, the rule learned in the last 2 posts is that you can stack smaller chords to create bigger sounding ones. So you take that rule and run with it! Explore and you never know what you’ll find!

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• How to form various types of seventh chords and why they are so important in playing by ear.
• Why seventh chords are the foundation of many more extended chords like ninths, elevenths, thirteenths, and altered voicings.
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Until next time —

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