when can I use the 6th, 7th & 9th chords?

S

semsem612

Member
I am playing a guitar and I already know all the major, minor, 6th, 7th and 9th chords but about the last 3 ones I don not know how to use them in the song. Could any one tell me when to use each of them. Thanks in advance.
 
Hi,
A good thing to do might be to look up popular songs that you know and have a look at the chords online.
Play along but keep an eye on what the chords are and where they're being used.
Minor 6th, for example, is going to be really common.
In G major that's Em, and in C it's Am - The 6th chord is the relative minor of the major key.

Or maybe you meant straight 1-3-5 chords with 6th,7th or 9th note added in?

Let us know. :)
 
For the 7th chords...
Let's say your main chord is E (let's use a 12 bar blues pattern for example) and you want to go to an A. Just before the A you play an E7. It sort of a transition chord to A.
For the 9th chord example - maybe a more rock and roll in E. In the key of E a lot of times you hit the B at the end of the verse and come back and start in E again. Make the B a 9th (might be a 7th/9th) to give it a little variety.
 
The dominant 7th chord (with major 3, but minor 7) is named as such because the V chord in the key is called the Dominant (where the I is the tonic, the IV the subdominant) and, in a major key, if you want to add a 7 to the V chord it has to be a minor 7. The 3-5-7 in the V7 is actually the diminished vii chord for the key, which is a bit moody and unsettling and really feels like it wants to go back to the I. So it's used quite often in place of the V chord.

Likewise, in a major key, the IV really should be a M7, the 3-5-7 of which is the vi, which is the relative minor of (and really 2 of three notes of) the tonic. It is often used in places where you might expect to find the tonic, or sometimes in passing to lead back to the tonic.

Course, nobody ever follows those rules! Sevenths of various sorts get thrown around all the time. A whole lot of what makes blues what it is is that those fuckers don't apparently know how to play a M7, and just play dominants for every damn chord. "That don't fit the key!" :P

The other extended chords are less ubiquitous, and a bit less obvious. Most of the time they are used for what is called "voice leading", which is kind of about listening to each note in the chord, and the melody that it is playing. That is, you're not just grabbing the "right" chord, you're like doing a nice little melody on the B string (for example) as the chords change. And sometimes to make that happen, you have to use notes that are outside the triad, and then you try to justify it to the music nerds by naming the chord.
 
The 6th and 7th chords in your progression should come after the 5th, and the 9th should come after the 8th.
:D

Couldn't resist. My theory is too weak to answer your actual question though. Sorry.
 
I make it a point not to ever use the 6th and and 9th chords....so if anyone needs some, I have plenty of them left over.
 
Nope....brand new w/tags...still in the box.
I only took them out to look at them.

These are mint 6th and 9th chords....not like the used shit you get on eBay.
 
Steenamaroo said:
Hi,
A good thing to do might be to look up popular songs that you know and have a look at the chords online.
Play along but keep an eye on what the chords are and where they're being used.
Minor 6th, for example, is going to be really common.
In G major that's Em, and in C it's Am - The 6th chord is the relative minor of the major key.

Or maybe you meant straight 1-3-5 chords with 6th,7th or 9th note added in?

Let us know. :)
Click to expand...
I get the relations ship of the 6th and the key's relative minor, but isn't it typically ok to just call (in your 'G plus the E note for example) a G6 chord?
Thanks
 
mixsit said:
I get the relations ship of the 6th and the key's relative minor, but isn't it typically ok to just call (in your 'G plus the E note for example) a G6 chord?
Thanks
Click to expand...
He was talking about the vi chord. You're talking about the I6.
 
semsem612 said:
I am playing a guitar and I already know all the major, minor, 6th, 7th and 9th chords but about the last 3 ones I don not know how to use them in the song. Could any one tell me when to use each of them. Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

Learn to play just one Beatles song and you'll probably hit all those chords.
 
mixsit said:
Ah I see, makes sense now. So I6' is a way to express a note (in this case that note in the tonic's (I chord's) scale?
Click to expand...
Errr... That's not how I meant it.

The Roman numeral is the chord's relative position in the scale. Uppercase is major and lower case is minor. So I is the root chord as a major triad - C(Major is usually implied*, right?) in the key of C, and vi would be Am.

If there's an Arabic numeral with the roman, it tells you the "modifiers" to the chord. I6 in C major is C6 - C E G A, which is what I thought you meant when you said "6th chord".

I think steeno thought you meant "the 6th chord in the scale", or the vi.


*Major is implied with triads and with any other chord unless there's a 7 in it. When there's a 7 involved, and no other designation, it's actually assumed that it will be a minor 7th added to a major triad - a dominant 7 - along with whatever other notes. So C6 is C Major 6, but C7 is C Dominant 7. If you want the major 7, you have to specify CM7
 
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