Chord Question

[FMC+]

Hi Mark. Frank here; thought I'd pose this question through your forum to up your registration and contribute to your traffic.

Meant to ask you this on Friday, but spaced: Why is the Ami9 chord in Ex. 46 of the Funk Book (xx5557) an "A" chord when there's no root note (A) in it? (Note to Forum: Yes, I'm a noob.)

[Mark Wein]

Hey Frank! biggrin

With many chord voicings we can drop the root (or sometimes even the 5th) and still retain the "character" of the harmony, especially in settings where there is a Bass player or other instrument contributing those notes that complete the harmony in the overall mix....

In a blues progression you can actually get away with just using the 3rd and 7th of a dominant chord for the I, IV and V chords since those two notes are only found together in a dominant chord and the bassist (or other guitarist) is typically filling in the Root and/or 5th in their part.


I'm thinking that I might do that concept for this weeks video lesson....

[thredlok]

does it also matter what key your in?

I noticed a F6 is also Dm7 idn_smilie

[Mark Wein]

Key is not important, but the overall stack of notes are.

Lets use a C major triad as an example. The notes are C, E and G. In any combination they make a C chord

Root position C E G

1st Inversion E G C

2nd Inversion G C E


If we take those notes and make the bass note an A, then we get A Minor 7th - A C E G

If we take a Cmajor 7 chord ( C E G B) and make the bass note an A then we get the Aminor9 ( A C E G B )

If we make the bass note a D then we get a Dsus or D11 D C E G (missing are the 3rd and 5th but the c is the 7th, the E is the 9th and the G is the 11th or sus4 depending on how you want to look at it)

If the bass note is an F we get Fmaj9 or Fsus F C E G ( no A or 3rd for the F major triad)

You can hang any note under a triad and get another chord if you want.

F/C (F over a C bass note) works as a C sus chord


There is a song on the Felt CD called "Killing Time"

At the end I just play D to E as open chords but the bass plays D E F# G# A B D B A G# F# E D

What this does is make the chord progression D E D/F# E/G# D/A E/B D E/B D/A E/G# D/F# E D

Now the ending doesn't sound like two open chords going back and forth smi

[FMC+]

Thanks Mark. I follow your first answer conceptually--I'll assume that the second will be clearer to me in time . . . .

[Mark Wein]

smi

We'll be getting more into chord construction in coming months...my answer covered a bunch of stuff that we haven't gotten into yet....