I left you with this nice ballad-style chord progression:

*Play the chord with your right hand and play the single bass with your left hand.

[Set 1]
1-chord = C major (C + E + G) *** Bass: C
5-chord = G major (B + D + G) *** Bass: B

[Set 2]
1-chord = C major (C + E + G) *** Bass: A
5-chord = G major (B + D + G) *** Bass: G

[Set 3]
1-chord = C major (C + E + G) *** Bass: F
5-chord = G major (B + D + G) *** Bass: E

[Set 4]
1-chord = C major (C + E + G) *** Bass: D
5-chord = G major (B + D + G) *** Bass: G

*This takes us perfectly to the beginning, where we start all over with our C major (1-chord).

And for a chord progression that only uses 2 chords, it sounds pretty darn good!

It’s used EVERYWHERE from Mariah Carey to Andre Crouch, as you saw on the videos I shared with you yesterday.

Today, I want to show you how to spice up this chord progression by employing one little trick. I’m not even going to cover more chords just yet. I’m just going to show you how to spice up the 2 chords you already know from this example.

Want to know the secret?

Some of you may already know it…

The secret is the “9.”

(And this works for any slow, ballad-style song — especially worship music).

Now, some people call it the “2,” depending on how and where you’re using it. I’m not too much concerned with explaining that part right now. You can find tons of prior lessons on the terminology by searching for “ninth chords” or “add 9″ in my search box above.

But what is important is determining what the “9th” (or “2nd”) tone of your chord is.

Here’s how you find the magic 9 and then I’ll show you what to do with it.

Let’s look at our first chord, which happens to be a “C major.”

It obviously comes from the C major scale:

C D E F G A B C
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

From yesterday’s post, you understand the importance of numbering your scale.

Notice, however, that the scale only goes up to 7. Let’s add another octave (basically repeat the scale a little higher).

C D E F G A B C D E_ F_ G_ A_ B_ C

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

(Don’t mind the little “_” underscores. I’m just using those to make my numbers line up with the letters. I can just see someone freakin’ out over that now! :-)… “Oh my gosh, what are those underscores!!!” Just joking…)

What is the 9th tone of the scale?

Answer: D

It’s also the 2nd tone of the scale so whichever way you want to look at it is fine. For the purposes of this lesson, the only important thing is that you know the NOTE to add. The 2 and 9 will always give you the same NOTE (although one is a high version and the other is a low version, technically).

So what do we do with this magic “9th” tone?

You guessed it.

We simply add it to our chord.

C major triad
C + E + G

C major with added 9
C + D + E + G

Some people even choose not to play the “C” because it will be taken care of with your left hand bass. If you prefer that sound, then only play “D + E + G” on your right hand with a “C” on your left hand bass. That will work too!

Ok, so let’s replace all our chords with our new chord and see what we get:

*Play the chord with your right hand and play the single bass with your left hand.

[Set 1]
1-chord = C major (C + D + E + G) *** Bass: C
5-chord = G major (B + D + G) *** Bass: B

[Set 2]
1-chord = C major (C + D + E + G) *** Bass: A
5-chord = G major (B + D + G) *** Bass: G

[Set 3]
1-chord = C major (C + D + E + G) *** Bass: F
5-chord = G major (B + D + G) *** Bass: E

[Set 4]
1-chord = C major (C + D + E + G) *** Bass: D
5-chord = G major (B + D + G) *** Bass: G

*This takes us perfectly to the beginning, where we start all over with our C major (1-chord).

Sounds good doesn’t it?

But we won’t stop there. Let’s add the secret “9″ to our 5-chord as well.

Simply go through the same process with the G major chord, determining it’s 9th tone (or 2nd tone).

The magic “9″ for G major should be “A.”

But if you recall from yesterday’s lesson, we intentionally inverted our “G major” chord so that “G” was on top. This provided a smoother transition between the two chords. We surely don’t want to mess this up by adding “A” on top so we’re actually going to add it on the bottom:

G major triad (inverted)
B + D + G

G major with added 9 (inverted)
A + B + D +G

*For some, it can be awkward playing the “A” and “B” with separate fingers so some people just play both the “A” and “B” with their thumb. That’s right! You can play two notes with one finger. Musicians do it all the time! So if that’s easier for you, just let your thumb handle both notes.

Let’s wrap it all up!

[Set 1]
1-chord = C major (C + D + E + G) *** Bass: C
5-chord = G major (A + B + D + G) *** Bass: B

[Set 2]
1-chord = C major (C + D + E + G) *** Bass: A
5-chord = G major (A + B + D + G) *** Bass: G

[Set 3]
1-chord = C major (C + D + E + G) *** Bass: F
5-chord = G major (A + B + D + G) *** Bass: E

[Set 4]
1-chord = C major (C + D + E + G) *** Bass: D
5-chord = G major (A + B + D + G) *** Bass: G

Curious to hear what you guys think about the “added” 9 trick! Let me know!

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!

Hear and Play Chords 102: The Power of Seventh Chords

This audio course will start where chords 101 left off and show you step-by-step…

• 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.
• The power of the "magic 3rd & 7th" and how manipulating them can help you to instantly play dozens of chords in all twelve keys… very easily!
• And much more! Click here to learn more | Buy now

Until next time —

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