The Flat 5th and The Flat 9th Chords – Two Ways To Make a Chord More Interesting

The flat 5th and the flat 9th chords add tension and interest to a song.

Good morning. This is Duane, and we’ve been doing a series of review lessons on chords. We started out with a major chord, then we went to a minor chord, then diminished and augmented and 6th and 7th and major 7th and last time we took up 9th chords. Today I’d like to take up 2 altered chords. Any chord can be altered, but the most common alterations, I think, are the flat 5th and the flat 9. A flat 5th would be like this. Usually it’s combined though with a 7th. In other words, if you have a C 7th with a flat 5th, if you just play the C chord, it’s content to stay there, isn’t it? If you put in a 7th, it wants to move, doesn’t it? You feel some pregnancy, it wants to go someplace. If you flat the 5th, it really wants to go somewhere. It just tightens that desire to get onto the next chord. Let me give you an illustration. You see, it resolves stronger if you flat the 5th with the 7th than if you don’t. They’re both fine but if you want a real tight sound, then you go to that flat 5th. Any chord can have a flat 5th. You could have a F flat 5 or F 7th flat 5 and so on. G, G flat 5, G 7th, G flat 5th and so on throughout the 12 chord, 12 measure chords.

You could also have a flat 9th. Now last time we covered 9th chord, and that involves the 9th degree of the scale. We said that almost always a dominant 7th is included in a 9th chord, not a major 9th chord, that’s different. That’s a different feeling, isn’t it? A dominant 9th has that dominant 7th chord in it. Now to tighten that, just flat the 9th. That really wants to go home to … That wants to move up the 4 to the F chord, doesn’t it? You’re playing, that’s G minor 7th, C 7th, C 7th with the flat 9th. If you want to double up on that, flat the 5th too. That’s really a strong, and that wants to resolve to F. Just the 9th itself flatted really tightens it up. I like to do this, this sort of thing. What that looks like is the A major chord over C 7th, and it is, but that’s not how I’m using it. I’m using it as a flat 9th, and I’m putting in the 13th as well. I’m straddling it, you know what a straddle is. It’s where you take … No, so 2 on … I did a 2 on there, I think. A straddle is where you leave out the middle note of the chord like so, but I did a 2-1-2, 2 notes of the chord, then 1-2-1-2-1-2-1 and then home to F.

Two alterations, the flat 5th and the flat 9th, and that’ll add a lot of color to your playing if you plug those in occasionally. Of course, you don’t want to overdo it, but it does add some nice pepper to your … interest to your song, if you use them occasionally. That’s it for today. If you enjoy these little short videos, come on over to playpiano.com and sign up for our video series. Hope to see you there. Bye for now.

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Here’s a great little book on chords and chord progressions on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Piano-Chords-Chord-Progressions-Exciting-ebook/dp/B0076OUGDE/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404158669&sr=1-1&keywords=piano+chords+duane+shinn

Here is the video on YouTube:

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