Exploring flavoursome extended jazz/funk chords

1 Here’s our old friend the C major scale again – a familiar starting point for many an Easy Guide. But this time, we’re going to explore beyond the original seven notes and go further up the keyboard, past the octave, to repeat the same set of notes a second time. This means we end up with CD E F G A B C D E F G A B.

2 Numbering these degrees, as shown above, gives us the numbers we need to start building extended chords – we talked about extended chords, namely 7ths and 9ths, back in 200’s Easy Guide. But let’s now look at extending a basic C major triad as far as it’s possible to go – all the way up to 13, the highest possible interval in music theory.

3 Let’s keep adding alternate notes to the C major triad until we hit the high octave C and basically run out of notes. What we end up with is a Cmaj13 chord, made up of the notes C (root), E (major 3rd), G (5th), B (major 7th), D (9th), F (11th), and A (13th). The final chord takes its name from the 7th chord on which it’s based. As we’ve used a maj7, this makes it a Cmaj13.

4 We can make this into a very popular jazz chord, a dominant 13th, by altering one note slightly. This is done in the same way that you’d make a major 7th into a dominant 7th, by flattening the 7th, which is the B natural in this case, Bb. turning it into a By adding the 13th to a dominant 7th chord, it makes it a dominant 13th chord, written here as C13.

5 What’s interesting is that you can maintain the flavour of the extended chords without having to include all of the notes. So as an alternative, let’s look at a different way to voice a dominant 13th. Start with just the root and the flattened Bb 7th (C and in the case of C major).

6 We then add the 3rd (E) and the 13th (A), but with the 13th moved down an octave into closer proximity to the 3rd. So, if sat at a piano, the left hand would play C Bb, and while the right hand would play E and A. This spaced-out voicing – which we can notate 1,b7:3,13 – provides all the information the ear needs to hear a 13th chord, without needing the 5th, 9th or 11th.

7 What about minor chords? Here’s the A minor scale, the relative minor to C major. A basic Am triad is made up of the notes A (root), C (minor 3rd) and E (5th), and its first extensions are Am7 ( A-C-E-G) and Am9 ( A-C-E-G-B). These are the standard voicings for these chords, but we’re going to look at something called rootless voicings for these.

8 Rootless voicings are just variations of a chord played with the root note taken out, on the assumption that this will be handled by another instrument or part – usually the bass. To get a rootless Am9, we remove the A root note, then shift the top two notes – G and B – down by an octave chord. Played over an A bass, this G-B-C-E voicing works well for the genre.

9 As an example of how these voicings might be used in a track, here’s one made up of a drum loop and a bassline, played over four bars. The key is Am, and the bass is playing the root notes AD F G, one change per bar. We’re going to add some suitable chords based on the voicings we’ve explored, starting with the rootless Am9 voicing shown in step 8.

10 We next add a D13 chord in bar 2. As F#- standard, the chord is D- A-C-E-G-B, but since our D is being handled by the bass, we can remove the root. Also, as the major 3rd, flattened 7th and 13th are all that’s needed to qualify the chord as a F#- dominant 13th, we only need use B-C-E. Notice how close this chord is to our Am9.

11 The next chord is an F9 chord played without the 7th. In a normal voicing, this would just be an F major triad with an added high G, but you can play an alternative, more closed-off voicing by moving the G down an octave – between the F and the A. Not only is this easier to remember and play, but its notes and sound fit with the previous two chords.

12 For the last chord, we’ll use another dominant 13th – G13 this time – but voiced using the 1,b7:3,13 voicing. The G F#, major scale contains GA B C D E which at first gives us G-F-B-E. Above, we’ve inverted it to fit with our previous chords, with the G raised an octave and the whole chord played over a G bass part, we get F-G-B-E, rounding things off nicely.