Extended chords
We’ve given you a very practical demonstration of chord extensions in the walkthrough above, and while we’re generally avoiding too much jargon this issue, this is a topic that would benefit from a few concrete definitions. The first two types of extended chords are
seventh chords. A major seventh uses the standard triad pattern for a major chord and then adds a note four semitones on top. So that’s C-E-G-B, for example. A minor seventh is similar, but adds three semitones on top of a Eb- Bb. minor chord – say, C- G- One more variant is the dominant seventh. This is a mixture of the two, in many ways, taking a major chord but Bb only adding three semitones on top. C-E-Gwould be an example of that.
If you look through a standard major scale, the notes available to you mean that the major seventh is a natural candidate for the C chord, while the D minor and E minor chords will easily turn into minor sevenths. You can easily build a major seventh on the F, but the G encourages that lovely dominant seventh chord.
Moving things further up, you can build on the seventh chords by adding three or four semitones (whatever’s allowed by the key you’re in) to build a ninth chord. C major 9th would be a five-note C-E-G-B-D, with the ‘ninth’ reaching into the next octave. D minor 9th would be D-F-A-C-E.
And if you decided to miss out the seventh note and just add the ninth to the original chord (as in C-E-G-D), that’d be called an add 9 chord. These chords continue building in just the way you’d expect, with 11ths (or ‘add 11’s) or 13ths, right until you come back to the tonic note – and things start repeating as you get higher and higher.
Of course, these chords can be inverted like any other (as we’ll show you on the next page), but when doing so, watch for clashes between adjacent notes – extensions can get a bit messy with so many notes hanging around.