The Chord That Should Not Be - 7#9 aka "Jimi Hendrix Chord" [MUSIC THEORY - MIXED THIRDS]

you're hearing the notes of an A minor chord a c and e on top of this A minor chord there's a lot of notes that sound good like the notes of the a minor scale these all sound very nice on top of my a minor chord there's other notes that sound good as well like the major 7th the major 7th has a little bit of spice on top of my minor chord other notes like the trone even sound good here's a trone and you can hear even the trone sounds good on top of them minor chord but you know what doesn't sound good on top of a minor chord and is very rarely heard is the major third it's really not a welcome sound and most people don't enjoy it we're hearing a chord with both types of third but what's really weird is this exact same set of notes is very popular and sounds great and we love the way it sounds so how can that happen how can we have something that sounds so bad and also sounds so good at the same time and that's what this entire lesson is going to be all about is the Clashing of thirds how can we harness that for good how can we avoid it when it gets evil more broadly we're going to be examining the role of how major thirds and minor thirds might both appear at the same time in a song either on top of each other or kind of being mutually exclusive and kind of Shifting back and forth this is a topic I explore pretty deeply in my new book the signals music chord progression codex but it's taught over several chapters so I thought it would be helpful to combine a lot of those Concepts into one simple video here to get started I want to begin with a basic musical truth something you want to remember something we just want to accept as a fact and that's that minor chords really don't welcome major thirds all right that's what we heard at the beginning of this video if we're trying to present a minor chord which traditionally has this dark sad dramatic atmosphere to it then adding the major third in there is just going to pollute that Ambience it's not going to add to the minor flavor and it's really just going to confuse our ear so that's just one thing we kind of want to accept for now we'll talk a little bit about this at the end of the video but for now just kind of think if you're playing a minor chord don't pollute it with a major third but let's switch directions a little bit let's talk about major chords here's an a major chord A C sharp and E and this is a very stable chord it's so stable in fact that it can actually support the sound of a minor third on top of it so here's what we'll do let's listen well first let's listen to a major third all right here's an a major chord and what I'll play is I'll play the notes a c Shar and E those are the notes of the chord but I'll also add in this four here so I have 1 3 4 5 1 3 4 5 this sounds pretty good right as it should but let's change my major third to a minor third instead one flatted third fourth and fifth I think this sounds pretty good too to me this sounds more bluesy and rocking as opposed to that kind of happy Sweet Sound we heard earlier so what we're hearing is the minor third on top of a major chord and and the result is this nasty clashing that we actually like it's this bluy you know rocking sound that we've grown to really enjoy it's a clashing that is actually you know preferable to us so for trying to present a major chord yes you can throw a minor third on top and we're just basically going to create the blues but there's a music theory problem here it's a little frustrating chords can't handle both types of thirds you can't call it like an a major minor third you actually have to call this note a sharp nine and if you do the math that's the same thing as a sharp two but the number two is reserved for suspended chords so if you want to add a minor third to your major chord just call it a sharp N9 so this chord right here is a major add sharp n but here's the deal if we're going to bluesy our major chord like this there's another note that's probably going to come along for the ride and that's the flat 7 the flat 7 just adds a little bit of extra bluy commotion to that set of notes and it creates the chord A7 sharp n which is very very common in the Guitar World casually it's known as the Jimmy Hendrick chord A lot of jimmi Hendrick songs just use this chord as the tonic instead of a major chord so if I'm writing an E major we would normally get the chords E major and a and b but if we decide to just bluy our tonic chord we could play E7 sharp9 and you're going to hear that stuff a lot in Jimmy hendri songs like purple hay and Foxy [Music] Lady but I want you to think of sharp n and flat 7 as just being corrupting influences on a major chord our happy innocent little major cord can just be you know matured and corrupt a little bit by adding in that sharp nine and adding in that flat 7even as well and knowing that knowing that we can just Blues a fire or corrupt any major chord it makes it pretty easy to use this chord all over the place so you know if I want to write a jam that's just a d and e what if I play all of those chords as seven sharp n chords A7 Shar 9 D7 sharp9 E7 sharp9 I can easily turn that into some you know Ruckus blues rock song reminiscent of something that like uh Stevie rayon might [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] play [Music] but I need to bring up that we will often see the seven sharp n chord in the five position so if I'm in the key of A it's really common to hear e 7 sharp N9 all right that results really well back to a major we'll hear that in um for example Michael Jackson's Man in the Mirror we also hear in acdc's shoot to Thrill The Seven sharp n chord from the five resolving back to the one chord and it also works in minor Keys as well I can go from E7 sharp9 and resolve to a minor and it works fairly well but I really want you to go inside of this progression and see what's happening we're actually Hearing in the key of A when we do this we're hearing both sevenths at the same time we're hearing G sharp as the major 7th but we're also hearing G natural and they're both resolving up to this note a and the reason I want to bring this up is because in a recent video I said you don't want both sevens floating around at the same time Dorian has a flat seven we're bringing in a major seven we don't want those two to ever happen at the same time well that's clearly not true all right there are times where you do want both sevens floating around at the same time but hopefully you agree that it's for those bluesier moments in the video I said I don't want both Sev I was going for something a little bit more harmonic a little bit more you know melodic and maybe more Renaissance Era and when I think of Blues Rock I don't think of Renaissance and classical so there's certainly a time to have both sevenths or both thirds but hopefully you'd agree those are for more bluesy rockier Moments One Last little detail here about that sharp n normally when a cord calls for a ninth we're free to play it an octave down as a second instead so a add n might be played like this with a high B forming the ninth or it might be played like this with a lower B forming the second but in a seven sharp n Cor the sharp n is almost always seen up high on the chord as heard here and it's very rarely going to be played down low in the cord where it rubs up against the major third and lastly though we wouldn't call it a sharp nine we should expect that the minor third might appear way underneath a major cord as part of a baseline heard [Music] here now here's another fun little feature of the Blues and how minor thirds and major thirds work together on top of a major chord or a dominant seventh chord or a seven sharp n chord it's really common to hear minor thirds get corrected into major thirds and then you know something else happens so here's a minor third that gets immediately fixed and hopefully you hear this a really enjoyable ritzy bluesy sound what's strange to me is this doesn't work as well in Reverse I don't like the sound of going major third to minor third I think that's just confuses my ear but that sounds amazing to me and this little correcting the third or approaching the third this happens a lot in the Rhythm Department as well so you'll often hear guitar players play like an A7 chord but it has a minor third that immediately gets corrected you hear that I've got this third that's getting hammered on on my guitar [Music] so very very common little trick to just approach that third or correct that minor third into that major third and once again that creates a very bluesy sound to my ears at least now let's completely change directions we're still going to start with a major chord but now when the minor third comes in it's not just going to get laid on top now when the minor third comes into our major key party we're going to let it completely replace the major third so major third will leave the house when minor third comes around we would commonly refer to this as modal mixture because we're kind of changing parallel scales but let's just demonstrate it here is an a major chord and then here's an a major 7 chord right obviously we could use the a major scale over top of this and that includes the major third note C sharp but if I bring in a chord like C major 7 well we've clearly brought in the minor third C right so how about over that chord I don't let any major thirds happen how about all my major thirds just get moved down to C right so they're kind of mutually exclusive and you'll notice this does not create a bluesy effect because those thirds never have a chance to interact really what creates what summons that blue spirit is when those thirds are rubbing up against one another here they can't rub up against one another because it's just like they're sharing the same space one leaves the stage when the other one comes on so I've taken that simple little chord progression and I've arranged it into a little Jam here for you so you can hear what it sounds like to explore the major third over the a major chord and explore the minor third over that c [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] now if you like that sound you should really check out my other videos on modal mixture where I go into that more in detail specifically the one on combining minor and major and also my video on borrowed chords I think those would be very helpful supplements to this video if you're unfamiliar with those topics so to Briefly summarize when our tonic cord is Major there's two common ways we'll see the minor third sometimes minor third just flies in and lands on our major tonic and it smears it with this Blues effect right and that's really enjoyable in in blues and rock sometimes minor third comes in and kicks major third out of the party and to me that creates this more dreamy you know uh In Between Worlds that we might associate with modal mixture but let's go back to minor tonics in the key of A minor I told you we've already kind of observed the fact that we don't want to hear a c smeared on top of my a minor chord but you know what we do want to hear a lot we do want to hear the minor third of that key get completely replaced with the major third right so once again sharing space and this is what a pickery thirdd is check out my video on the pickery third but basically we're in minor and then all of a sudden the minor third gets replaced with the major third what rarely happens is the major third happens at the same time we don't often hear that we also rarely hear chords get borrowed that include the major third so if I'm in the key of A minor it's just rare to he hear any C Sharps right unless you're doing like film score if I bring in any chord with a c you'll hear it's going to sound pretty dramatic there's a C minor well a dramatic chord change you might hear that in film score here's like an F major that has a c in it right these are all like big Magic chords and kind of Haunting they're not the chords you'd hear in your everyday pop song Or Love Song so really my point is that if your tonic is minor yeah major third is allowed in the door but if major third comes in it should probably take over completely right and minor third should just go away for a little bit but I very rarely want to hear both thirds interacting with one another in that minor context now here's the funny thing the blues is maybe one of the easiest styles to start playing right out of the gate as a musician it's not difficult but this lesson made it difficult right we really went in in depth into what's going on in the Blues to try to figure out what gives it that sound and I think this is really helpful if you've only learned classical music theory right if you've only learned like major scales and one four five chords and then all of a sudden you join a blues band you're like wait a second why are we playing minor thirds the entire time wait they said it's a jam in a major but I'm playing a minor pentatonic that can be very confusing I know it was for me so hopefully this kind of illuminates to you that yeah major keys are supposed to have major thirds but minor third Bring It On in and we're going to have a party with that minor third same thing with flat 7 bring flat 7even in there we're going to have a party with that too and it'll just bluy that major that major sound altogether and really even though I don't believe in wrong music I think one of the wrongest choices you could make in most instances is to try to present a minor chord and then somehow get a major third in that mix now as a fun little followup to this video I do recommend you head over to Adam ne's Channel and watch his video Tik Tok and dissonance do not mix there's a lot of focus in that video on the same Harmony that we're talking about here the twoth thirds happening together at the same time but being an Adam Neely video it's a completely different style of presentation and a different approach all together but that's it for now I hope you thought this video was educational informative if you appreciated this video you have to thank my patreon supporters for making it possible I can't just make free stuff like this with no ads without their support so they have my gratitude hopefully they have your as well if you'd like to join them you can there are links Below in the description but there are other ways to support this channel if you'd like to you can buy my new book the signals music chord progression codex the digital version is available everywhere and the physical version is now available to ship to some countries or just head over to my site and check out some of the digital courses that I'm offering for sale some are even name your own price thank you for watching I'll see you next [Music] time

Channel: Signals Music Studio

Views: 111,290

Keywords: jake lizzio, dole mansion, crystal lake, free lesson, guitar lesson, cool guitar, play solos, how to play guitar, music theory, music theory lessons, composing music, writing music, signals music, signals, 7#9, 7(#9), jimi hendrix chord, hendrix chord, altered chords, blues minor scale, blue note, blues theory, blues music theory, both thirds, mixed thirds, modal mixture, rock music theory, blue theory lesson, analyzing blues, 7 sharp 9

Id: aT0HloEyHvg

Length: 14min 59sec (899 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 11 2024