When Should I Use Extended Chords?
When Should I Use Extended Chords?
You’ve heard the old saying: Along with great power comes great responsibility and that is certainly true when it comes to harmonizing. As young pianists we learned about triads. A triad is simply a three-note chord and although it could be any three notes, we usually think of a triad as one of the four basic chords types, major or minor and much less commonly, diminished or augmented.
These triads can keep young musicians busy for a very long time and as we all learn, any melody can be harmonized using the I, IV, or V chord. Don’t know what those are? Watch this short video:
But what if your plain vanilla chords are getting a little boring? What if you want to spice up the music a little bit? Maybe the basic color palette is no longer enough for your ear and you want to add some pastels, neons, or even some ugliness to your music? One way composers spice up their compositions is by using extended chords.
What’s an Extended Chord?
Remember those triads? What’s stopping you from adding extra notes above the triad? Instead of the basic C Major triad of C,E,G you could make it a C Major 7 triad by adding a B above the G. See why it’s called a “7”? Because the note you added is the 7th degree of the C Major scale! Pretty slick, huh? Technically a 6th or 7th is not an extended chord, but some musicians view them as such. Strictly speaking, an extended chord is any chord that includes a note outside the span of an octave.
You probably know what’s next—You can make a C Major 9 chord by adding a D. You can make 11 chords, and 13 chords but we’ll save those highly complicated chords for another time but notice that the 11s and the 13s have more than one triad in the chord. Composers sometimes call these polychords or bitonality.
Since we’re going to stick with the 7 and 9 chords, it’s important to know that there are numerous different types of these chords. There are minor 9s, diminished 7s, augmented 7s but here’s the most important rule to remember when using extended chords: “less is more.”
What’s your favorite restaurant? Maybe it’s a local Italian restaurant that has a lasagna that makes your mouth water every time you think about it. Now ask yourself this: Would that lasagna be as mouthwatering one month from today if you ate it every day for the next month? Extended chords work the same way. If you over use them, they become ordinary.
There’s another problem with these chords: Because they’re so thick, sometimes they will make your music sound muddy. Learning to voice these chords takes skill and experience. Your teacher can help you with this but in the meantime, experiment with the 7 chords and as you gain more skill, try the 9 chords.
Just like a carpenter, adding a new tool to your toolbox takes time and a tool used incorrectly can be dangerous. Music works best when it’s simple and transparent. Adding more “stuff” doesn’t make you a better musician. The professionals know that their toolbox may be full but there are but a few of those tools that are used at any given time.
Here is a Wikipedia article on extended piano chords: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_chords
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