Help! WTF Chord is THIS?!?!?!

OGG

OGG

Master of the Meh
Is this even a real chord?

Ian McCullough of Echo and the Bunnymen always refers to the song "Killing Moon", as 'The greatest song ever written' (such a humble guy he is).

Anyway, the song does indeed have some sorcery to it in the form of this chord. I've heard countless people cover this song and it never sounded right. Everyone plays a G major, C major rotation on the verse, but the second chord is NOT a C... it's THIS MOTHERFUCKER that is damn near impossible to transition to.

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That's 1st finger 1st fret 4th string, 3rd finger 3rd fret 5th string, and 4th finger 3rd fret 1st string.

What in the actual fuck?

Once I listened and figured it out, I thought "oh Ian! You tricky sonofabitch!"

I'm sure this is the chord in the song, but I think it's a bulkshit/made up chord because I've never seen it before.

So music nerds, what is it?


 
Mark Wein said:
Is the 6th string Open e being played?


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Yes, low E is played open.

So it's a Major/Minor 7, blah blah blah...?

Sounds like a bullshit made up chord to me, dat muddedpucker
 
Definitely a minor 4 chord, so yeah minor-maj 7. Honestly I don't hear that E natural in the bass. Could be my shitty computer speakers or the fact that the sound is washed out in too much reverb as was the stupid fashion of the day.
 
Depending on which note is the root it could be a lot of things.
To me it looks like a Cmaj7 chord with a major and a minor third.
In short, a jumbled up dissonant mess.

Yea, I'll bet he made it up.
 
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Chords are meant to be fucked with..........Especially if you're playing alone on an acoustic.

 
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/ chord designation has always seemed backwards to me. To me it makes no sense to put the bass note at the end. It's the first note so it should go at the beginning, like E/Cmaj7 instead of Cmaj7/E. But what do I know ? I'm really only a root-five bass hack realistically speaking.
 
OK..So I just played it myself...Sounds like nothing more than a transition between two somethings..LOL..
 
Go ahead and try transitioning to it from an open G... I dare you.

It's some fucked up shit squidlow!

I have to play the G with the 2,3,4 fingers in order to do it, which by itself is a rat bastard after nearly 40 years of playing it normally.
 
Well shit dude..No doubt it would take a while for me to do that...The whole memory thing ..

I just tried and it doesn't come natural for sure..

But neither did finger picking at the age of 13..

Edit..and I'm not sure where it would fit in but I'm sure someone figured out where to make it fit...
 
Glad I learned that ol 2-3-4 G early on. I do it both ways without thinking. I use your way more when I wanna get that extra d note on the b string,
or going back and forth from G to D with that grip. G - C is better doing it the 2-3-4 way.
 
I'm gonna have to give that a try. It may be easier for me after learning the Foo Fighters "Big Me" all those years ago. Maybe I don't play it right, but I play the C chord adding my pinky on the 3rd fret of the high E. Ever since then, I've added that C to my playing. It may be tricky at first moving the first finger over a string, but playing that C chord for 20 years may give me a leg up :grin:
 
Cool chord- Scofield used something similar sounding on "Kilgeffen", except the Scofield voicing is different, & is in F.



Listen at 1:embarrassed:4 to hear the bass reference the major if you can't hear it in the intro. Kilgeffen was actually the first time I ever really heard a maj/mi chord. The Echo & the Bunnyen song as to be the only time I've seen a chord like that used in pop music.

It's a really impressionistic sounding chord. I find I can transition from open G ok. Hooray for me?idn_smilie:embarrassed:
 
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