All About Dominant 9th Chords

Here is a transcript of the video in case you would like to follow along: Good morning. This is Duane. I was just playing a dominant 9th chord. Dominant 9th chords are really pretty easy to form, because they’re made out of the root, the 3rd, the 5th, the dominant 7th, and the 9th note of the scale. Of course, you’ll need to know the scales in order to figure out what they are, okay? If you don’t know what a scale is, then you’ll have trouble. Or if you don’t know what a particular scale is. I know you know what a scale is, but let’s say you don’t know the Db scale. That’s a Db scale, so you’ve got to know where the root, 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th are in order to play that chord, obviously, okay?

Unless your hand is a lot bigger than mine, you’ll have to use two hands to play it. There’s lot’s of ways to voice it, of course. I usually play a root on my left hand, and the rest of the chord in my right hand. But you can split it up, you can play root, 5th, 3rd, 7th, 9th, it doesn’t matter. There’s lots of ways to voice it, as long as you get all those notes in there, okay?

It depends where the melody is though, if you’re playing a song, you know? In melody’s G, then you can’t have D up there. You’ve got to voice it like so, so you have all the notes of the chord under the right hand melody, okay? If the melody was E, you’d play it like that. If the melody was Bb, you’d play it like that. Of course, if the melody was D, you’d play it like that. If the melody was C, you’d probably play it like that, with your thumb across the 3rd and the 9th, okay?

So with that in mind, let’s go through the 12 major chords, and figure out what they are, what the dominant 9th chord is. By the way, the dominant 9th chord is different than the major 9th chord. The major 9th chord is like that, it uses a scale 7th. But the dominant 9th chord uses a lowered 7th. That’s a dominant 7th, and when you add the 9th to it, it’s called a dominant 9th. That’s a major 7th, and when you add a 9th to it, that’s called a major 9th, maj9. So when you see a symbol for maj9, that’s what it means. If you see just a C9, that’s what it means. You lower the 7th.

I will try to attach a Wikipedia article, if you want to see that illustrated and explained further. In any case, let’s go through the 12 major chords. That’s the C 9th, root, 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th. Here’s the F major chord, you add the 7th and add the 9th. Here’s the G major chord, 7, 9. D major chord, add the 7th, add the 9th. E major chord, add the 7th, add the 9th. A major chord, add the 7th, add the 9th. Db major chord, add the 7th, add the 9th. Eb major chord, add the 7th, add the 9th. Ab major chord, add the 7th, add the 9th. Gb major chord, add the 7th, add the 9th. B major chord, add the 7th, add the 9th.
You can see why it’s important to know the scale, right? Otherwise you won’t know where the 7th and 9th are. Bb major chord, 7, 9, okay? So that’s all there is to dominant 9th chords. They’re a nice bright sound. You get that feeling from them.

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Here is a Wikipedia article on 9th chords: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_chord#Dominant_ninth

Here is the YouTube video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwlReOAa9KE&feature=youtu.be
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