Friday, May 13, 2016

Oh, those wonderful 9 chords!

As an amateur guitar player, I didn't have much use for 9 chords. However, they sound wonderful and become surprisingly manageable on a ukulele with its four strings.

If you check the chord building chart from the "Chords, and how to make them" note, you'll see that a 9 chord is just a 7-th chord with the 9-th note of the scale added. Think '2', but an octave higher.

Consider three cases:

  • Bb: the 7 chord is (1,2,1,1). The 9 note is C. There is a C on the third fret of the first string, making the Bb9 (1,2,1,3)...which makes it sound a lot harder than it is! Keep the bar! That is, finger the Bb7 the usual way by using the index finger as a bar across all four strings and your middle finger fretting the second fret of the third string. Add your ring finger to the third fret of the first string and you've got it!

    This is a moveable chord. For example, when you move your index finger one fret up the neck to (2,3,2,4) and you've got B9!

  • D: the 7 chord is (2,2,2,3). The 9 note is E. There is an E to be found on the third string, fourth fret, making the D9 (2,4,2,3)...which makes it sound a lot harder than it is! If you finger your D7 by using your index finger as a bar on the 2-nd fret and your middle finger at the 3-rd fret of the first string, then all you need do is add your ring finger at the 4-th of the third string.

    This is a moveable chord. For example, when you move your index finger down the neck and let the nut take its place, you have C9=(0,2,1,0).

  • E: the 7 chord is (1,2,0,2). The 9 note is F#. There is an E to be found on the second string, second fret, making the D9 (1,2,2,2), which again can sound a lot harder than it is! Two ways to obtain the E9 are by using four finger tips and by barring the first three strings at the second fret with the middle finer, say, and arching the index finger to fret the fourth string. However, since the E9 has the first three strings fretted at the second fret, it doesn't matter what is done with them on the first fret. So, a what some find as a much easier way to form the E9 is by barring all of the strings across the first fret with the middle finder and all four strings across the first fret with the ring finger.

    This, too, is a moveable chord.

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