Instantly spice up any chord progression
Sometimes the simple things are the best. Today I’m going to show you a ridiculously simple trick that pros use very often. We are going to take any chord progression, no matter how simple, or overplayed, and make it sound like something special.
Here’s the gist of it: you take your chord progression, and you replace (or, as we musicians say, “substitute”) the chords you are using with added 9th chords. So, if your chord progression is A E D A, you will play Aadd9, Eadd9, Dadd9, A add 9 instead. (HEAR IT).
Let’s proceed to see what add 9th chords are, how they are made, how to play them on the guitar and some example of their use in famous songs.
Add 9th Chord Theory
Everything I say in this section is interesting and helps clarify the theory of the add 9th chords, but it is not strictly necessary to use this tip. If you’d rather experiment with these chords by yourself first, feel free to skip to the next section for the time being.
As we have seen in a previous lesson on triads, a triad (such as C major or A minor chord) is made by three notes. The add 9th chord is simply a major or minor triad to which we add an extra note, called “the 9th”. The 9th of a chord is simply the note that is two frets above the root (of course we are not playing the root and the 9th together on the same string — this is impossible. See the next section for actual shapes of added 9th chords).
For instance, we know from our previous lesson that a C major is made by the notes C, E, and G. So, the Cadd9 chord will be made by the triad (C,E,G) and an extra note, the one two frets above C: this note is a D. Thus Cadd9 = C,E,G,D. In the same way, and Am chord is made by the notes A,C,E, an the 9th of A is the note B (two frets above A). Thus Amadd9 = A,C,E,B.
Add 9th Chord Shapes
All the theory just explained boils down to a very simple rule on the fretboard: from any chord shape find one root note and raise it by two frets. To understand this rule, here are some basic open strings positions for some add9 chords. Confront them with the “standard” chord position and you’ll se that in all cases the difference is a single note played two frets higher than usual.
Of course, we can do the same for any barre chord position. Unlike the opens strings positions, these shapes are movable i.e. you can use them anywhere on the fretboard. This way you can play any add9 chord just by shifting them up and down the fretboard.
Famous Songs That Use This Trick
As a last treat on add9 chords, play the following tabs and see if they remind you of famous songs.
The first one, as you see, has been composed simply by spicing up the Am and F chords with added 9ths. It’s amazing how good it sound, isn’t it?
For the second example here, I’m transcribing only the beginning (I’m leaving the rest to you as an exercise). The full chord progression is Aadd9 F#madd9 Dadd9 Eadd9. You would never had guessed that this famous song started with a chord progression so simple as A F#m D E!
Here we have seen a few basic ways to use the Add9 chords, but there is way more to learn about them. Once you had fun with them, if you want to know more about Guitar Harmony then click on the button below... you won't regret it.
