Question about maj9 and min9 chords
Found in: Accompaniment
Sharlene H., Spain
I have some accompaniment questions. Can anyone please tell me how to play a maj9 and a min9 and tell me if they include the tonic or not? I believe they both include the 7th note, 2nd, 3rd and 5th notes of the scale.
Mark M., New York
A complete maj9 is 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9 (9 being the same as 2).
A complete min9 is 1, flat-3, 5, flat-7, 9.
As in Accompaniment 1 and elsewhere, these chords can be voiced differently (rearranging and/or leaving out certain notes) and still be legitimately considered to “be” the chord in question.
Gordon Harvey., Australia
You do need the tonic for these chords, Sharlene. Why? If you take CMaj9 as an example, the full chord is C, E, G, B and D. If you take away the tonic, the remaining notes form an Emin7 chord. In fact, often a CMaj9 will be written as Em7/C. In an accompaniment setting, I’d play the Maj9 by lowering the bottom note of the major triad by a half step (like in a Maj7) and adding a new note a whole step above the bottom (like in an add9). Your homework is to figure out an accompaniment version of the min9
Neil Moore
The tonic doesn’t have to be in the RH.
Laurie Richards, Nebraska
An easy way to think of it in terms of Acc1 is:
maj9 = maj7 and +9 combined
min9 = 7 and +9 combined, starting from minor triad
(LH plays tonic)