progressive chord function

[kinoy24]

Hi.. i wanna ask how to use a major 13 chord to improvise a song? thx alot..

- Kris

[steve jones]

I think most people consider the dissonant intervals of extended chords to be no different to seventh's. Sometimes they can be viewed as melodic dissonances, other times as part of the underlying harmony. In each case, they resolve according (when using the tonal method). However, you'll find a lot of impressionist composers chose not to resolve them at all, using a technique called 'harmonic planing' (parallelism).

Id advice you think of 9ths, 11ths, 13ths, etc, no differently than you would of 7ths.

SJ

[opus57]

Sorry, could you help me out? What does 7th, 13th and so on mean? I'm from Switzerland am I'm not accustomed to this chord names. Does "7th" for C major mean "C maj 7"? If this is the right way of understanding this notation code, then would "13th" for C major mean "C - E - G - A", woldn't it?

thx opus57

[steve jones]

Sorry, could you help me out? What does 7th, 13th and so on mean? I'm from Switzerland am I'm not accustomed to this chord names. Does "7th" for C major mean "C maj 7"? If this is the right way of understanding this notation code, then would "13th" for C major mean "C - E - G - A", woldn't it?

thx opus57

Yeah, you got it. The 7th is the name of the interval extending the triad.

So CMaj7 is the C Maj triad with a 7th added:

C, E, G, B


C Maj9:

C, E, G, B, D


And so on. Often some of the notes will be omitted when you get too high up. Chopin Op 48 No 1 (I think its No 1) has some pretty high extended chords. Also, Rachmaninoff Op 16 No 3 (the slow one with the melody in 3rds).

SJ