I'd like some 2% 4th chords, please.

As I have discussed in previous posts, traditional harmony/theory constructs chords in intervals of a third. There is another type of chord construction that is quite common in jazz, called “quartal harmony” or sometimes better known as “4th chords.”

Quartal harmony is most commonly associated with the modal jazz of the late 1950′s and 60′s. For those of you who have ever heard the greatest jazz recording ever made – Miles Davis‘ Kind of Blue – you are already familiar with the sound.

Quartal harmony and 4th chords translate extremely well to the guitar, making anyone who plays them an instant multi-platinum record selling artist and put on the Grammy short list. (It’s true, just ask Lil’ Wayne; he’ll tell ya.)

Let’s hip ourselves to a little modal jazz and quartal harmony, shall we?

Would you rather I throw one of these wrenches at you instead?

One of the great aspects of 4th chords is their slightly ambiguous/rootless quality. Because they don’t contain any tension notes such as the 3rd and 7th in a traditional chord, they have something of a more mysterious and aloof sound to them (to my ears, anyway). To form 4th chords, simply stack a chord using intervals of a 4th. Here is what they look like in D:

Now, I’m hoping you played through this example before continuing to read, because I purposely threw a wrench into the works. Did you figure out what it was? If not, please go back, play through the chords, and think about the concept for a minute. See if you can figure it out. It’s a great exercise for your brain.

You should have noticed that some of these chords are not built in perfect fourth intervals. The third chord, for example, has the notes Bb to E, which is a tritone/augmented 4th, not a perfect fourth (which should be Eb). So why are we not using perfect fourths? The answer is because we’re playing music, not engaging in theoretical discussions about music. You always have to keep in mind that it has to sound right just as much (if not more) as be right from an academic standpoint. If you are playing a quartal harmony vamp in ‘D’ the Eb will probably not sound very good. Sometimes it will, sometimes it won’t. It’s up to you to figure out what is appropriate and go from there. In most modal songs the E natural note will most likely sound better, so your chord will include the tritone from Bb to E and then stack the ‘A’ note as a perfect fourth above ‘E’. Read that again if it doesn’t make sense, especially the part about playing music.

Quartal Harmony Comping

Now when we comp, as mentioned in several other posts, we don’t necessarily want to play thick chords with lots of voices. This muddies up the music and makes it difficult for the soloist to stretch out. For that reason, we can remove the root voice of each chord and only play the three upper voices, like this:

The sound is essentially the same, but it breathes a little better.

Chord Inversions

One very cool feature of these chords occurs when you start to use inversions. By taking the bottom note of each chord and transposing it up one octave, you create some very hip chord voicings that you can use in your comping.

Definitely play these voicings over a ‘D’ bass vamp and listen to how they sound. The 2nd intervals sound great to me, very pianistic in nature. You can also experiment with a second inversion, moving what is now the bottom note up an octave as well. (Figure this out on your own, folks. I want to keep your brains actively working.)

You don’t have to only play these chords over modal tunes, by the way. These chords also sound great as substitutes for many minor chords, especially minor 11 chords. Again, let your ear guide you; if it sounds good then use it. If not, modify it. If that still doesn’t work, throw it out and do something else.

That is, in a nutshell, the concept of 4th chords and playing quartal harmony. I suggest you get some modal playalong tunes (or use Band in a Box) and go to town for a while. Also experiment with moving voices in each chord so you’re not just clunking chord after chord. If you have not heard Kind of Blue, buy it and absorb it. If you don’t know who McCoy Tyner is, now is the time to start thinking about non-guitarists for a spell.

(1 = high E string, 2 = B string, 3 = G string, etc…)

1234
1235
1236
1245
1246
1256
1345
1346
1356
1456
2345
2346
2356
2456
3456

That’s certainly a lot of string group combinations, so for the time being I want to concentrate on only one group – 2345; we’re going to make this as simple as possible. So, in using the 2345 group that means we’re only going to play chords using the B, G, D, and A strings. This is the most comfortable playing area of the guitar. (We’ll go beyond this a bit later.)

The guitar poses another unique problem (in addition to only having six strings). Unlike the piano, playing large chords (7th chords, 9th chords, etc…) while retaining their original note stacking in thirds is incredibly difficult to do. The arm and hand just aren’t capable of spreading wide enough to accommodate these notes, given the fact that guitars are tuned in 4ths (the exception being the major 3rd tuning between the ‘G’ and ‘B’ strings). Because of this, the guitar is perfectly suited for playing the chords in inversions.

Let’s start in the key of C, using a CMaj7 chord. The stacked version of this chord is C, E, G, B. On the guitar, this chord would be played:

(If you don’t know how to read chord charts like this one, you can do some Internet searching and find out. It’s pretty easy.)

Okay, so there is a CMaj7 chord. Simple enough, right? Well, what happens if you want to play an F#m7 to C#7 progression?

This is a bit difficult, don’t you think? Especially at fast tempos.

So, the solution is to use chord inversions to make the fingerings more accessible. But, we don’t just want to put the root of the chord on the top and try to stack the rest; you’d end up with the same problem. What we want to do is figure out the easiest (and best-sounding) way to voice the chords on the guitar. Going back to our CMaj7 example (C, E, G, B) we can voice the chord this way:

From lowest string to highest the notes are C, G, B, and E. By simply changing around the order the notes of the chord are positioned, you get an easy-to-play chord with the interval of a fifth from the bottom, which as I said in my last article is a very strong sound to the listener.

Cool, so play this chord a few times and get used to the sound.

Okay, that’s enough. Now what we want to do is figure out how to play the inversions of this chord using the 2345 string group. To do this, you take the first note (in this case we’ll start on the ‘C’ note on the A string) and find the closest chord tone. The closest chord tone from C is ‘E’. Since we have to stay on the A string, the logical answer would be to play this ‘E’ on the 9th fret. Continuing with this method for the other three notes, you end up with this voicing:

You may have to switch your fingers around so it’s more comfortable, but what we have now is the first inversion of a CMaj7 chord (since the first chord we played had the ‘C’ as the lowest/root note, going to the next note of ‘E’ makes it first inversion). The order of notes is now E, B, C, and G.

Continuing on to the next inversion we get:

And finishing up with the last inversion:

Since the last inversion (7th in the bass) starts at the twelfth fret, you can technically move this down an octave – using the open G string – and play the same chord an octave lower.

There you have it; a CMaj7 chord in all inversions using the 2345 string group. It’s quite simple, actually. The hard part is committing these voicings to memory so you don’t really have to think about where they are on the fretboard. The reason these voicings are so important is that it allows you to not only introduce fresh sounds into your playing, but it also allows you to play in position so you don’t have to continuously shift up and down the neck to play chords.

If I may be so inclined as to assign homework, what I would like for you to do now is apply the same principles for the CMaj7 chord to the following string groups:

3456
1234
1235
2346

These are the ‘major’ string groups, and if you can master them you’ll have no problem playing most styles of music. I’m assuming, of course, that you’ve already mastered the power chord. One thing to remember is that every chord and string group is not going to necessarily start on the root of the chord. We were lucky (coincidence?) that the lowest chord tone of a CMaj7 on the 2345 string group family was ‘C’; you won’t be so lucky with the other string groups. I’ll give you a hint, for the 3456 string group, the first CMaj7 chord you’ll be figuring out is the first inversion (‘E’ is the lowest note), which starts on the second fret of the D string.

To be honest, this will take you quite a while. It’s certainly not easy, but the payoff is tremendous. Once you have a firm grasp of the CMaj7 chord, you need to then figure out ALL of the Maj7 chords (C#Maj7, F#Maj7, BMaj7, EMaj7, AMaj7, etc…). This will be significantly easier once you have the chord structures for the Maj7 chord committed to memory, but it will take some time to remember which note each chord starts on. Hey… no one said this stuff was going to be a cake walk (on Easy Street…).

Great, so it’s now a year later, and you can finally play the Maj7 chord in all keys and inversions using the five major string group families. Think you’re done? Um… no. You need to apply the same principles to min7, dom7, min7b5, and diminished chords next. This should be a bit easier, as you only have to change one or two notes from one chord to the next to get the different tonalities.

Some Thought Nuggets

I know this is a lot of work. Believe me, I still struggle with these chords and inversions every day myself; not to mention having to deal with altered dominant chords like dom7#5#9 or min11 chords. It’s a lifelong process. The good news is that after a while this work actually becomes fun. Trying to figure out what voicings sound good together is a matter of personal taste, and helps to give you an original voice. All of the great players (jazz or otherwise) have certain harmonic devices that they use which makes them sound unique. What will your devices be?

There are two more important points that I want to make. I want you to let these thoughts percolate for a while, and then next time you play/jam try to see how you can apply them. Firstly, keep in mind that you don’t always have to play all of the notes of the chord. Quite often jazz players, for example, will only play the 3rd and 7ths of each chord. Other times they may leave the 5th of the chord out. In the cases of extended voice chords (13ths, #11 chords, etc…) you won’t be able to play all of the chord tones using the four-finger method. In these cases you need to think about what chord tones are the most important. For example, when I play the blues I often like to play a Bb13 chord instead of the stock Bb7 chord. The common voicing for the Bb13 chord in root position is this:

It’s an easy chord to play, and it sounds great. The notes of this voicing from lowest to highest are Bb (the root), Ab (the 7th), D (the 3rd), and E (the 13th). The fifth isn’t really necessary in this case, and most of the time when playing a 13th chord you would substitute the 13th for the 5th anyway. That being said, however – and coming into the second point I want to address – why do I need to play the Bb note? I mean, most of the time I’m playing with a bass player, and if he’s doing his job correctly he’s walking through that Bb enough for the both of us. In that particular situation, is it really necessary to ALSO play the Bb? Probably not. In fact, by NOT playing the Bb you actually open up the sound quite a bit and prevent the sound from becoming too “bottomy.”

So by taking out the root we arrive at this voicing:

It’s very “hip” sounding, and in conjunction with a bass player walking through Bb7 (or a bass player even just riding the Bb note) it leaves a lot of open space for everyone else.

With this method now you can go back to all of the original chord structure work you just did and try playing chords by taking out certain notes. Also try exchanging extended range chord tones with others. So, replace the 3rd of a chord with the #11th, or replace the root with the 9th, etc… You will see your chord vocabulary grow exponentially, and your musicality will also increase tenfold in no time!

One last thing and I’ll give your brains a rest. Let’s go back to the last chord example we used – the Bb13 with the root taken out:

As you work through your chords, you may (hopefully) notice that this particular voicing is the same as playing an E7#9 chord without its root. The E7#9 chord looks like this:

Take out the root (in this case the ‘E’ on the A string) and you have the same exact chord as the Bb13 with no root. The “killing two birds with one stone” mantra applies greatly here, as you now have access to two chords using the same voicing – both with no root and therefore more open for the rest of the band to play with. You should go through all of your chords with this idea in mind and see how many you can come up with.

That’s about it for this lesson. The more I work on these ideas and commit them to paper, the more ideas I have for future articles. As always, please honor me with feedback and suggestions so I know if this information is helping and what else you would like to see.

Enjoy!

I thought it would be fun to share a few of my favorites with you and, hopefully, get you to share a few of your favorites with me.

So, here they are, in no particular order; my 5 favorite chords:

1. F#Maj7#11

For me, at least, this was the chord heard ’round the world. It’s the opening chord of Rush’s “Hemispheres” and completely knocked me on my ass the first time I heard it. There’s nothing overly special about it, but the added #11 from the open B string just locks this chord into sexyville for me.


2. Am7add11

One of my new favorites, I’ve been using this chord a lot in writing material for the new Din Within CD. This is a great chord to vamp with and move up and down the neck for different sounds.


3. CMaj9#11

I call this the “Wayne Krantz” chord. It’s the only chord I’ve heard him play that I can figure out. Put
just a little bit of gain on your amp, turn your volume pot down a smidge, and let this chord rip!


4. Min9/Maj7

This is a general-utility comping chord. If you play it with your pinky on the 9th scale degree, it’s a great minor 9th chord voicing (pinky on the ‘B’ note sounds great as an Am9 chord). If it’s played on the 7th scale degree, it’s also a great Maj7 chord (pinky on the ‘B’ note sounds great as a CMaj7 chord).


5. Ab 6/9

Not sure why I like the sound of this chord in Ab more than any other key, but that’s how I roll.

Chord Hacks: Blues Chord Comping from Fretterverse on Vimeo.

Let’s start with the most basic of four-string chords, the CMaj7 chord from the 2345 string group. You’ve all seen it before, but for the sake of completeness I’ll show it again:

We’re changing the order of tones around to facilitate the guitar’s tuning – instead of playing C E G B we’re playing C G B E. Same notes, just a different order.

Chord Inversions

And so where do we go from here? If we are playing a piece of music that has a CMaj7 chord for 8 bars, just playing your one stock voicing is going to get very boring, very quickly. To keep the music alive you should probably think about playing different kinds of CMaj7 chords. The easiest way to do that is to play an inversion of the chord you’re currently playing.

To do this, simply start on each note in the chord you’re playing and move that finger up to the next note in the chord:

• C moves up to E
• G moves up to B
• B moves up to C
• E moves up to G

It’s the same exact chord, just played in a different note order and in the 5th position instead of the 3rd. Here is the new CMaj7 chord:

There are two more inversions we can do with this chord on the 2345 string group:

Now, just with the 2345 string group alone, there are four chords you can play instead of just the original CMaj7.

Vary the String Groups

This can be easily repeated with both the 1234 and 3456 string groups. 3456 will most likely sound a bit too muddy if you are playing with a group (as opposed to playing solo or backing up a singer or solo instrument). The fun, however, is what you come up with when you work through some of the other string groups. Groups 1235 and 2346 start to create more interesting sounds although they are still pretty tame. It’s when you get into string groups such as 1245, 2356, 1346, etc… that things get truly interesting. Here are the CMaj7 chords from the 2356 string group:

Try playing them yourself and see how they sound. You’re probably going to need to use the fingers of your right hand to pluck the chord rather than strumming with a pick, and you may want to try it with a clean tone first to hear all of the notes and their intervallic relationships.

Putting it Into Practice

To go a bit further with the example, I’m going to take the first 8 bars of the jazz standard “All the Things You Are” (which I’ve been exploring more deeply in my own practice) and create a very simple chord melody using the 1245 string group. The goal here is not to create a masterpiece of music, but to explore the different chord voicings and inversions that are available to me. I’m going to put a chord on virtually every melody note, which doesn’t necessarily sound great, but maximizes my tonal possibilities. First, a lead sheet of the first 8 bars:

Now, the simple chord melody of the 1245 string group (click image for larger view):

Notice that in some places I had to shift the chord up or down an octave in order to accommodate the guitar’s range. This can obviously be modified in a “real” setting by simply varying the string groups you use – no one says you have to play everything in just one group, after all!

Move the Melody

To make things even more interesting, take the melody out of the top string (in this case, the high E string) and play it on all of the other strings. In essence you are building four different chord melodies for each string group. We just did the first one with the melody on the E string; now we will do the same thing with the melody on the B, D, and A strings. It may be hard to hear the melody at first, especially on the B and D strings, so it might help to sing along with the melody to help it stand out.

You should also try to see if you can get the melody string to stand out so its not overshadowed by the volume of the higher strings. This is a challenge, but worth the effort.

Without further adieu, here is the second chord melody with the melody on the B string (click image for larger view):

I’ve given you two, and there are two more. I wondering if perhaps you should try to figure them out on your own? (hint, hint)

Experiment, Play, and Have Fun

I have written lots of song ideas using different chord groups, spiced up some monotonous song ideas, and even brought some new life to old cover songs during jam sessions. It’s not just a question of “learning tons of chords” and arbitrarily throwing them into a song just for the sake of variety. It’s about listening to what’s going on around you and trying to fill in the gaps where appropriate.

Homework?

I am allowed to give homework on a blog? Well, I’m going to anyway. Go to the second 8 bars of All The Things You Are and work out a chord melody using the 1245 string group. Put the melody in all voices (so you’ll be working on four chord melodies) and see what you come up with. Here are the next 8 bars:

You can probably stop at bar 7 unless, of course, you want to do more than just the next 8 bars. I don’t grade on a curve, and extra credit is always acceptable.

Have Fun!

I’ll be honest, this stuff isn’t easy, at least not for me. Sometimes it takes me a VERY long time to get them down. I’ll give you a piece of advice: Don’t spend all of your time writing these out in hopes to be able to sightread them later. If you want to write them out, fine, but you should spend the majority of your time learning them on your guitar and not notating them on paper; that method tends to distract from the learning process.

Most importantly, have fun with it! This is guitar playing after all, the greatest hobby around, so enjoy the time you spend learning and jamming!