The Neapolitan 6 Chord – How To Form It

Good morning. This is Duane. We’re doing a series on Good Stuff You Really Ought to Know About Music! It all deals basically with music theory. Today we’re going to take up a little known chord called the Neapolitan 6 chord – notated as N 6.

Chances are, unless were a music major in college or took music in college, you have never even heard of the chord. It’s good to know what other musicians are doing and have that available to you as well. As you know every note of the scale, if you build a chord on that, any note of the scale, they all have names. That is tonic, supertonic, mediant, subdominant, dominant, submediant, leading tone, and tonic. Of course, that’s the same on the left hand, tonic and so on. It doesn’t matter whether you’re playing it high or low or in between.

There is a chord called the Neapolitan 6 chord, sometimes notated as N6. It is a colorful chord but it got its name from a group of musicians in Naples, Italy. They used it a lot and that’s how it got its name Neapolitan, for Naples. The 6, the number 6 indicates it’s usually played in first inversion. You know what an inversion is, that’s the root position of the chord. That’s first inversion. The Neapolitan 6 is in first inversion.

What it is, it’s the chord based on the flat in the second degree of the scale, not tonic and not supertonic, but the flat second degree of the scale. That note, if you’re in the key of C, it would be that note. A Neapolitan 6 would be the D flat chord. It’s often played in first inversion and that would be like that. You have this kind of sound. I kind of like that sound myself. It works really well in minor, but you can use it in major as well. That’s really all you need to know about the Neapolitan 6. You build on the flat, second degree, this flat second degree of the scale.

If you’re in the key of F, the second degree of the scale is G, so the chord would be G flat. There’s the G flat chord, but normally would play it in first inversion. By the way, a 6 in case you’re not familiar with figured bass in music, if a chord is just a chord, it’s called a I chord. If it’s upside down it’s called a I 6 chord, a Roman numeral I, with an Arabic 6 by it. A little Arabic 6. That’s how it got it’s name. That’s a 1 chord followed by a 6, 4 after it. It got it’s name from the distance between the top note and the bottom one. That’s the 6th. Typically it’s a 6, 3, but they just leave out that part … musicians assume that’s what it is. That’s the second inversion chord, know as a I 6/4

You don’t need to know all that unless you’re really interested in music theory. Just remember this, the Neapolitan 6 chord is based on the flat second degree of the scale.

Hey, thanks for being with me. If you enjoy these little tips, come on over to PlayPiano.com and sign up for our series. We’ll hope to see you there. Bye-bye for now.

***For lots more good stuff on piano playing come on over to my website at https://www.playpiano.com and sign up for our free piano tips – “Exciting Piano Chords & Sizzling Chord Progressions!”

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: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBXrzBrnduo&feature=youtu.be

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