Extended Chords

This is a preview of the educational program A Jazz Improvisation Almanac which is under development for the Outside Shore Music Online School. Feel free to browse this preview and learn what you can from it. For a more completed product, though, check out the original freely browsable jazz textbook, A Jazz Improvisation Primer.

In classical harmony, it is extremely rare to see chords larger than a seventh chord. In jazz, however, it is quite common. Extended chords are built by continuing the process of stacking more thirds on top of existing chords.

In order to see how the specific notes are chosen, consider again the diatonic chords built on the major scale:

[EXAMPLE]

We use the I, V, and ii chords to generate extended major, dominant, and minor chords.

First, let us look at the major seventh chords. If we add the note a diatonic third above the existing seventh in the I chord, we obtain the major ninth chord, abbreviated maj9:

[EXAMPLE]

If we add another diatonic third, we obtain a major eleventh chord, abbreviated maj11:

[EXAMPLE]

If we add another diatonic third, we obtain a major thirteenth chord, abbreviated maj13:

[EXAMPLE]

If we were to add another diatonic third, we would return to the root, so the thirteenth is as high as we go. Note that the thirteenth chord already includes all the notes from the major scale:

[EXAMPLE]

The interval of the eleventh above the root is dissonant in a chord that also contains a major third above the root:

[EXAMPLE]

For this reason, the maj11 and maj13 chords are seldom used without alterations, which are discussed in the next section.

Turning next to the dominant seventh chord, we add diatonic thirds to the V chord to obtain dominant ninth, eleventh, and thirteenth chords, abbreviated as 9, 11, and 13 respectively:

[EXAMPLE]

Again, the interval of the eleventh above the root is dissonant against the major third, so the 11 and 13 chords are seldom used unaltered.

Using the ii chord to generate extended minor seventh chords, we get the following m9, m11, and m13 chords:

[EXAMPLE]

Here, there is no major third above the root, so the m11 and m13 chords are not considered dissonant.

We can also create extended chords based on the tonic minor chord by looking using the harmonic or melodic minor scales. The harmonic minor scale generates the following:

[EXAMPLE]

While the melodic minor scale generates the following:

[EXAMPLE]

As has been observed several times by now and will be explained further in the next chapter, jazz musicians generally consider each chord symbol to suggest a scale to use in improvising over the chord. The various extensions to the basic major, dominant, and minor seventh chords therefore do not convey much additional information; these extensions would have been part of the scale anyhow. Even pianists and other chordal instruments tend to add extensions automatically when playing chords to accompany a melody. The primary value in learning about the chord extensions is as a reference point for understanding chord alterations, which are discussed in the next section.

Note that we have not discussed extensions to the augmented or diminished chords. These chords are generally considered by jazz musicians to be alterations of major, minor, or dominant seventh chords, so these are discussed further in the section on alterations as well.

Copyright 2000 Outside Shore Music
Authored by Marc Sabatella

Extended Chords