Just like in “Twist and Shout,” you could carve out space in your songs for striking ringing extended chords. Whether you’re a songwriter looking to spice up your new compositions or a budding guitarist who loves to play jazz, learning extended chords will improve both your physical playing skills and your sense of tone, harmony, and feel. Ninth chords (and extended chords in general, really) also work great as a loud, ringing chord played to grab an audience’s attention. Guitar skills: Learn extended chords with our easy lesson. Some guitarists will also invert the chord to position the eleventh note at the top of the voicing (on the first string). Major 13th chords are even less bluesy than dominant 13th voicings because they remove the flat seventh note found everywhere in the blues. However, that dissonance can be a positive if you need to create extra tension at a certain point in your song. As the name implies, they include just the basic major triad and one additional extended note. For those reasons, add chords are more popular for progressions based nearly entirely around extended chords or for spacier, more ambient jams where excess tension for a chord to resolve would feel out of place. While it would be possible to create a minor sharp eleventh chord by raising the eleventh note a half step once again, the classic min11 chord voicing already includes the minor third, which obviates the need to play the third note on the fourth string. Playing an extended note (say, the ninth or eleventh of a chord) over a standard seventh chord would sound “out” and could create unwanted dissonance in many situations. The major and minor forms of the eleventh chord, while not cliche, are commonly recognized in jazz songs. The dominant eleventh is a particularly unusual chord. In this case, the root, b7, and b3 notes form a line across the sixth, fourth, and third strings (the fifth string is muted), while you can reach back to play the 11th two frets below on the second string. “Add” chords are indicated with an “add” tag between the chord letter and extension number. The root is often going to be picked up by another instrument anyway, such as bass or keyboards, so chances are good it won’t be missed. Extended chord progression week 1: In our first Extended Chord Progression we play the chords; Major 7th, minor 7th, Major 9th and minor 9th. That intentionally nasty sound could be a unique idea for a punk rock or grunge guitar tune. If you need to solo over an extended chord, find the voicing of that chord that you’d play for rhythm purposes and pick out the specific extended note. In addition to including the root, third, fifth, seventh, and eleventh scale degrees or some combination thereof (as you might guess), an 11th chord can also include the ninth scale degree. Dominant seventh chords increase that tension by lending an off-balance, uncertain feeling to the dominant chord. And while they may not be as common as power chords or classic barre chords, extended chords provide a spacey, dissonant sound that’s unlike any other chord. Minor eleventh chords are more common than dominant eleventh chords because the minor eleventh lowers the chordal third by a half step to create a minor third interval. As discussed above, these chords don’t include the seventh or extra extended notes found in basic extended chords — quite literally, they’re just formed by “adding” one extended note to the standard root-third-fifth major triad. Major thirteenth and minor thirteenth chords are also popular extensions for conveying the luscious, spacey sound of the thirteenth in a more suitable manner for different chord progressions.