IN THE WOODSHED

Charlie Griffiths examines the 7#9 chord and shows how to take it beyond Purple Haze.

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Example 2 demonstrates the most common voicing for the chord with a George Harrison ‘Beatles’ inspired riff. This shows how the #9 interval can be added to a static dominant riff in order to add some extra spice with a cool sounding interval.

The chord also has roots in jazz music and is a common ‘altered’ chord. Whenever a dominant chord is used as a functioning V chord, you can add alterations to it. Two alterations are the and #9. Example 3 demonstrates the A7 chord as a ‘functioning’ V chord as it is resolving to a chord a 4th higher (or a 5th lower), in the context of a minor IIm-V-Im progression. To add some

shar p 9 is an other way of saying min or 3rd so in fact the 7#9 chord contain s both major an d min or 3rd

extra dissonance we have used both the and #9 intervals in this example, to make the resolution all the more effective.

The name ‘altered’ refers to the Altered scale, which has the intervals 1- 3- #5- (or: 1- 9-3- 5- which is essentially a dominant 7th with all the altered notes added ( #9, and #5). This scale is also known as Superlocrian mode and is a sound used a lot in fusion music by players like Scott Henderson and Robben Ford. Example 4 shows a cool fusion-blues style riff based around the E Superlocrian mode, with two different E7#9 chord shapes included.

Finally, we look at a more relaxed example inspired by Dave Gilmour. Here we are in the key of E minor, or E Aeolian mode. In this key the altered dominant chord is D and, as we can hear, the altered and #9

Eb intervals ( and F respectively) work very well in this context too.

NEXT MONTH Charlie looks at using the waltz flavoured 3/4 time signature in rock