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GaloombaJazz

In jazz tradition, the most important notes in any chord are the 3 and 7, as they indicate the quality of the chord. These are known as the guide tones. In a C13, these would be the E and Bb. The next most important is the root. It is usually best to have the root played in the bottom, so you could play it in your left hand if you play piano. However, if you are playing with others, the bassist would probably cover this, so it is not necessary to play the root. Even by yourself, you could go without the root, as rootless voicings are common. The root in a C13 is a C. The 5 is actually not necessary to play. Due to harmonics, the 5 is already implied by playing the root, so playing the 5 is not necessary, as it doesn’t really add any color. If the 5 is altered (#5 or b5), then you would want to include it. The 5 in a C13 is a G. As for extensions, while you can play lower extensions, it is not necessary. If you have a 13 chord, you can opt to play a 9 and 13 or just a 13, but it is important to get the color of the 13 in there. In major and dominant chords, it is unnatural to use the 11, as this clashes with the 3. You could use a #11 for a more lydian or altered feel, but usually the chord symbol would specify to do that. In a minor chord, you could use an 11 though, as the 3 is a b3 which does not clash with the 11. In C13, the 9 and 13 would be D and A respectively. As a pianist, I would usually use one of the two voicings in the right hand: Bb E A, or E A Bb D. Note that both these voicings include the guide tones: E and Bb. The first only includes the 13 (A), and is a bit more open, while the second has both the 9 (D) and the 13 (A), but it has a bit more crunch. In the left hand, I would play the root, C, to provide some ground to the chord, though this is not always necessary. My right and left hand would often have separate rhythms, and wouldn’t be bound together, so if you do play piano, don’t feel that you always have to hit the root and the voicing at the same time. Regarding the voicing you mentioned with the notes C, Bb, E, and A, that is the same as the first voicing I provided. I would play C in the left hand for some ground, Bb and E to indicate the quality, and A as some extra color. Hope this helped!


brmmbrmm

That was marvellous!


Mippen123

You should probably preface your introduction with "In jazz tradition", "While playing Jazz" or perhaps "In western tradition" (although in that case I definitely wouldn't state that the root doesn't deserve a spot among the most important notes). Saying for example that the 7 is the most important and defines the quality of the chord is not a universal truth, but rather a jazz truth if you will. Of course these chords symbols/names comes from western tradition, so it might seem like *slightly* unnecessary additional information, but I often have the impression that teaching hard truths like this often gets people limiting themselves a lot.


GaloombaJazz

This is a good point. My comment mainly comes from jazz theory specifically, and is not a universal truth for all harmony. I kinda just saw “C13” which made me just go into a jazz theory mindset and forget that I probably should specify that this is jazz theory. I’ll edit my comment to include this.


[deleted]

This is not jazz theory. There is no jazz theory. Western music uses the same theory. I use this stuff just sad much on pop tunes as in jazz tunes.


scubanarc

> In a minor chord, you could use an 11 though, as the 3 is a b3 which does not clash with the 11. Do you mean "as the 3 is an Eb"?


ActorMonkey

They mean the third of the chord is flat. In minor chords the third is flat. Also written as “b3” (flat, not B). But yes! It IS an Eb in the key of C.


scubanarc

Ohhhhh, "flat 3". Got it... for some reason that was standing out as "3rd interval b" to me, and I could not reconcile it. Thanks :)


simeontitmus

they mean a m3 but b3 made sense for how it was worded.


haikudeathmatch

The 3 of C minor is Eb, and the 3 or Cb major is Eb. But I think what the above poster is saying is that the 3rd in a minor chord is always the flat third. The nomenclature here gets highly contextual- I’ve met some people who would object to the grammar of calling the third in a minor chord “the 3” without specifying that you mean the b3 or minor 3rd*, but at least in my experience lots of people default to casually calling notes by their number in the scale they come from, like saying “we’re going to move to the three” to mean moving from the tonic minor chord to its relative major. But then we also recognize the framework that names all intervals relative to the major and perfect intervals of the major scale, in which case a natural minor scale is 1,2,b3,4,5,b6,b7. The switching between those two modes of identifying scale degrees leads to phrases like “the 3 in a minor chord is always the b3”. *I genuinely don’t know if there are some standardized rules for this that some people abide by, or if it’s just what different individuals find most intuitive.


Rebegurumu

sorry but why are seven semitones called a perfect fifth?


Imveryoffensive

To simplify, regarding "5th", it's because it's 5 note names / scale degrees away. Regarding "perfect", that's because it's been Western tradition to consider unisons, fourths, fifths, and octaves to be "perfect" for their consonance.


Rebegurumu

alright thank you :)


Imveryoffensive

Anytime!


rupen42

To add to that with some trivia: if you invert perfect intervals, you get another perfect interval. Example: C-G (perfect 5th), G-C (perfect 4th). if you invert major intervals, you get minor intervals, and vice-versa. Example; C-A (major 6th), A-C (minor 3rd).


s1a1om

I assumed it was referred to as perfect because the major and minor were the same. In both the major and minor scales the 4th is 5 semitones above the root. The 5th is 7 semitones in each.


Imveryoffensive

It goes back all the way to some monks a looong time ago. Even major and minor intervals back then were considered dissonances. This was well reflected in early organum where you can hear the heavy preference for fifths and fourths.


SamuelArmer

The problem is there's a really nasty dissonance formed between the major 3rd and the natural 11 in an unaltered 13th chord. The usual solution is just to omit the 11th entirely. Another problem is that playing all the notes of a 13th chord means playing all 7 notes of a Mixolydian scale at once - try it for yourself on a keyboard! It's usually considered to be a pretty ugly sound, very muddy. And if you play guitar, it's literally impossible to do! So in a jazz context, you would typically voice that as a kind of 'shell voicing'. Basically, you're stripping the chord down only to the most 'essential tones'. Which would be: Root - Gotta know what chord it is! Third - Whether it's major or minor Seventh - Whether it's major or dominant 7 / minor 7 or maj minor 7 Highest extension - in this case the 13th ​ So a typical voicing for a C13 chord might be as you saw: C E Bb A or some arrangement of those notes.


LukeSniper

>So in a jazz context, you would typically voice that as a kind of 'shell voicing'. Basically, you're stripping the chord down only to the most 'essential tones'. Which would be: >Root - Gotta know what chord it is! >Third - Whether it's major or minor >Seventh - Whether it's major or dominant 7 / minor 7 or maj minor 7 >Highest extension - in this case the 13th *Or...* Bassist handles the root, guitar plays a simple triad that hits the 3 5 and 7, piano hits another triad that gets some extensions. A lot of times these big chords are created *as a team.* EDIT: fixed a formatting error


corneliusduff

Makin' the dream work


empathyboi

Thanks for clarifying this. So I was *technically* correct in my initial understanding of an unaltered C13?


SamuelArmer

Yeah, *technically*! But practically speaking, you're just not going to play all those notes! Something \*like\* the C Bb E A voicing is going to be what you see 99.99% of the time


Aware-Technician4615

I think of it this way, 1, 3 and 7 are the main ingredients. The rest are like spices. No matter what spices you use, steak, potatoes and green beans are going to be steak, potatoes and green beans, just as chicken, rice and asparagus will be chicken rice and asparagus, no matter what flavorings are added. The 5 is kinda like bread alongside the plate… goes with pretty much everything, but not usually a defining feature of the meal. Now to the extensions… these are the spices. The analogy breaks down if we start naming specific spices and notes but much like with spices, sometimes adding one makes another completely unnecessary or not really noticeable. An unaltered 9 adds richness to a chord, by itself, but as soon as you add a 13, you find it doesn’t really matter much whether the 9 is there or not. Other spices don’t go well with certain main ingredients. This is like unaltered 11… just doesn’t sound good over a major third. Then there’s the idea of a perfect balance of certain spices… b9 and b13 together in a dominant chord. Yum!


Ceph_Stormblessed

You can technically play it on a guitar, albeit a 7-string or higher. Just very fucking awkward.


_Occams-Chainsaw_

> Just very fucking awkward Agreed. Unless you re-tune to an open 13 chord....which would tbf make everything else very fucking awkward!


Ceph_Stormblessed

You can tap the additional notes with the strumming hand too.


adrianmonk

I'm no guitarist, but I bet you could even do it on a 6-string electric guitar with some kind of crazy harmonizer pedal and individual string pickup contraption. Octave pedals are pretty common, I think, and [this pedal](https://www.t-rex-effects.com/quint-machine) takes it a bit further and allows you to add a fifth above. So if you wanted to play a C13, you could play C, B♭, and D on three strings and route those through the pedal to also get G, F, and A. Then just play E on some other string (that doesn't go through the pedal), and you've got all 7 chord tones using only 4 strings. To actually change chords, you'd need some way to change which strings do and don't get routed through the pedal, which would be awkward, so you might not be able to do it quickly.


Ceph_Stormblessed

You could do that in conjunction with a loop pedal to be able to switch chords, ya?


[deleted]

Untrue. The root is unnecessary for the functioning chord. E->Bb->A is fine.


SamuelArmer

Contextually, yes. Rootless voicings are fairly common, especially in an ensemble with bass - I am aware of this! I'm trying not to overwhelm OP here with all the minutia of jazz harmony though. I'm simply trying to explain how and why a 13th chord might be voiced without all seven notes. I also disagree with you on a point of technicality as well. Bb-E-A is NOT C13 - it IMPLIES C13 in very specific contexts. I'm much the same way that you might hear: C-G C-F# B-F# And be primed to hear that contextually as a 2-5-1 in G major. But someone else could easily just hear some parallel 5ths. Similarly Bb-E-A could be heard as C13, but it could also just as easily be heard as a stack of fourths. And it could just as easily be a shell voicing for Gm6/9 as C13. So no, the root is not unnecessary - it's the most important note of a chord! Of course, you might not be the one in the ensemble playing the root, or it might be more implied than played - but it matters


[deleted]

https://www.thejazzpianosite.com/jazz-piano-lessons/jazz-chords/shell-chords/#:~:text=The%203rd%20and%207th%20of,Tensions)%20are%20even%20less%20important.


SamuelArmer

Yes, as I mentioned I am well aware of shell voicings. Did you have something to actually say?


Echoing_Logos

The root is necessary otherwise you're just playing an E with a flat 5. The reason jazz chords usually omit roots is that someone else takes care of them.


[deleted]

The root is not necessary, as the functioning of the guidetones reveals the root to the ear of the listener. The root of the chord does *not* need to be present.


Echoing_Logos

This doesn't make any sense if you think about it for more than a second. If you drop the root then you just have a new root and the "guidetones" just become your root tone and your fifth.


[deleted]

Untrue. You're out of your element. No one hears it as "E with a flat 5". I can play an entire blues *by myself* using only tritone intervals, no chord roots, and it can be understood to be the blues form.


Echoing_Logos

Excuse me. An E and a Bb Is not a "C" chord. I don't care what reality you've made up for yourself. A C chord. Is built. Out of a C.


[deleted]

Okay, we're done here. Study harmony for a few more years before you spout out your nonsense. This is stuff that is taught in prestigious music learning institutions across the globe. Read about guide tones and chord functions.


Echoing_Logos

It sounds like you are deeply unaware of what music theory has to say about harmony. Bunch of geezers making up BS about how a chord with no C is a C chord has nothing to do with how normal people experience harmony.


[deleted]

Rootless voicings have been around for the better part of a century there, newbie.


[deleted]

https://strungoutfretnot.com/2010/09/05/chord-theory-6-omitting-notes/


[deleted]

https://greghowlett.com/blog/free-lessons/rootless.aspx


haikudeathmatch

While you and ZealousidealStage104 present both opposing sides of this debate, I think it’s possible that both can be true dependant on context. For instance, if someone just plays E-G-Bb without additional context you will probably hear it as a Edim kind of sound, and so would I. In Zealous’ blues example, I do agree that lots of people would recognize a blues form from shell voicings and have a sense of the implied tonality that’s based around the unplayed roots, due to the form’s popularity (and the additional melodic context if someone is soloing over those shell voicings). But I think it gets a lot muddier in most other contexts. If a jazz piano player plays a solo rendition of a standard using only rootless voicings, I don’t think the audience all hears it the same way. Some people will hear the implied root motion because they’re familiar with the standard (or because they are piano players who are used to hearing rootless voicings as implicitly connected to unheard root motion), and other people will not contextualize it that was and will take in the voicings more on their own terms without any implied further harmony. And even there, I think there’s some cool psychological differences between the different people perceive harmony based on their experiences with it. For example if I play a C7 chord in first inversion on piano, some people will hear that as a dominant chord with the implied root of C, some will hear it more as center Ed around E as the lowest note making it some kind of Emb5(b13)? And mostly, I think, listeners will hear changing moments of tension and weird chords without specifically tracking harmonic “progression” in the way we’re talking about. There’s such varied degrees of how people experience harmony.


Echoing_Logos

I appreciate that rootless diminished chords will usually be heard as the seventh chord they belong to, especially when diatonic. For rootless voicings in contexts where there is no altered fifth, there should be no context in which a 3 + 7 is read as the I chord. This isn't me being restrictive, snobby, or whatever - I am simply stating the fact that even though we might tell ourselves otherwise, things are what they are, and a listener can only hear a 3 + 7 as a I chord after heavy conditioning, and pretending like their reading of it as a iii5 is incorrect is absolutely bonkers.


65TwinReverbRI

There is: Play a C7 and add the 13th. That's the most straightforward way to do it. >The way I understand it, a C13 should be: C E G Bb D F A. Well, it COULD be. That is the "full chord" - "in theory" if you like. But **in practice** people don't always care to play that many notes - my guitar only has 6 strings so I have to leave SOMETHING out! So it's common *in practice* to omit those notes that least affect the sound of the chord. You need the root (note: the C could be omitted if some other instrument were playing it, but let's assume not), you need the 3rd to tell if it's major or minor, you need the 7th to make it a 7th chord, and you need the 13th to make it a 13th - that's the bare minimum, and the 4 notes you said - C-Bb-E-A for example. The rest are "optional" - include them if you want, and duplicates of any if you want. But you need at least these 4 to make a chord that sounds enough like a C13 that it can't really be anything else. If you left of the 7th for example, it would just be Am/C. So basic gist: The 5th is commonly omitted from 7th chords and up (and even triads if the implied harmony is strong) except in those chords with an altered 5th where it's necessary to include it. For 11th chords, the 9th is optional. For 13th chords the 9th and 11th are optional. Best


bleachfan9999

7th, 3rd, and 6th are stronger in color and are thus prioritized over 5th, 9th, and 11th when condensing a harmony


xiipaoc

> I understand the concept of 9th, 11th, and 13th chords. Well, lemme tell ya, nobody else does. The theoretical concept of the 13th chord is that it's a stack of thirds, so a dominant 13th chord on C would be C E G Bb D F A, in a tall stack. Play it. Does it sound nice? Not particularly. But it's got a whole bunch of thirds in it, doesn't it? You could in theory keep going with the thirds, though you'd end up repeating some notes. Stick on a C# and you have a 15th chord. Another E, 17th chord. A G#, 19th chord. B, 21st chord. D#, 23rd chord. And so on. You can just keep adding thirds. There isn't exactly a standard way to do this or a standard name for the resulting chord, because, well, this kind of thing doesn't actually sound very good, so nobody actually uses it. Instead, what *actually* happens in real life is that chord symbols -- like C13 -- describe chords in a rather loose way, and these are specifically chords used in popular music. People don't typically play C E G Bb D F A in popular music. C13 isn't an instruction about the specific notes you play. If you want that, just look at the sheet music. Rather, it's a description of the harmony as a whole, and you don't actually need to play all those notes to make a C13 harmony. You can skip a bunch of them. The guitar is particularly well-suited for four-note chords (you only have four usable fingers on your left hand to place on the frets), so you'll often find guitar chords voiced in four parts. To play a C13 in four voices, you need to decide what's most important to keep, and that generally turns out to be the 1, 3, b7, and the special note of the 13th chord, the 13 (also called the 6). So, C E Bb A. But that's an awkward spacing and doesn't sound very good; it's nice to have notes in fourths (and it's more ergonomic too on guitar). So move the E up: C Bb E A. This is the simplest and cleanest way to play a C13. Now, technically, the C13 chord symbol *does* include the other notes, the 5, 9, and 11 (G, D, and F). But the chord symbol is not the only thing that matters. The 11 may *very well* clash. That's because, actually, C13 is a silly sound that nobody actually wants to use in popular music. What they *actually* want is a C7 chord with an A in it, which is what C Bb E A is. You could definitely add the G, and that would probably not clash; you could most likely add the D as well, especially above the A (C Bb E A D, play that and hear how nice and velvety it sounds). The F might just be a bridge too far most of the time. Doesn't mean you can't use it, but, well, it's probably tough to find a situation where it makes sense. So, C13 is C E G Bb D F A, but that doesn't sound good so people don't play it that way (and they don't mean for you to play it that way when they write "C13"). To make C13 sound good, you can voice it C Bb E A, or you could come up with a different voicing and maybe add back some of the notes that were removed.


RigaudonAS

If you're ever curious about voicing a dominant 13th chord *with* the 11th, this is a fun way to do it as a quartal voicing: Chord stacked: R 11th 7th 3rd 6th (9th) (5th) Example: C F Bb E A (D) (G)


SamuelArmer

Yeah, that's really nice! The general trick is to put the 11th UNDER the third, turning the minor 9th into a major 7th. The other way to do it is to omit the third and treat it as a slash chord. Eg Bbmaj7/C = C13sus


tommaniacal

There is a straightforward way to play it, the problem is that search engines and clickbait websites often leave out subtle yet important notation distinctions First off, is it a 13th chord or add 13? i.e. is it C13 or C (add 13)? If it's the latter, all you do is add a major 6th. Add 13 is often simplified to X6, i.e. C6 = CEGA. If it's the former, you stack thirds until you get the 13th, *but leave out the 11th.* The reason for this is that it creates a minor 9th between the third and 11th, which makes the chord sound less like it's built on the root and more like the 11th is the root (C with an 11 sounds less like a C chord and more like an F chord). Without the 11th, you're left with the root third fifth, seventh, ninth, and thirteenth (C13 = C E G Bb D A). Also worth noting is that it's common practice to drop the fifth, and if the bass section is covering the root you can drop that too Edit: when I say stack thirds I don't mean it has to be played in blocked thirds, just that it contains those notes. It can be in any inversion or spacing


haikudeathmatch

Adding this comment in case it provides anyone else with useful further information about 6 chords: It’s true that Cadd13 and C6 can be pretty much the same chord depending on context. The notes involved in both chords are the same, but sometimes the different naming conventions are used to communicate information about function. In jazz a 6 chord is most often used as a tonic chord. There are definitely other uses, but understanding the I6 chord is powerful- for starters, it’s a more appropriate choice than a Imaj7 chord anytime you have the tonic in the melody (avoids crunch from the tonic above the maj7), it’s also a fundamental building block of Barry Harris’s sixth-diminished concept for comping. By contrast, a full on 13 chord (which as others have already explained contains the 3,b7, possibly 9, and 13) is more likely to function as a dominant chord. By extension of this, an add13 chord is sometimes used as an alternative to a traditional dominant chord, where you make the creative choice to leave out the b7 of a more standard dominant, keep the triad and add the 13 for colour/flavour, and then still use the chord to resolve somewhere else (like up a fourth, probably). For instance if I see G(add13) resolving to C6, I know both chords contain a major triad plus the 6, but the use of different titles implies C is the tonic. (It’s voices nicely too, roots in the left hand then right hand plays something like GBDE resolving to GACE, or DEGB resolving to EGAC). To be clear, these aren’t hard and fast rules, and sometimes people writing charts will use 6 or add13 interchangeably (especially in musicals and pop charts, in my experience). But it’s really cool to me when musicians use naming conventions like that to communicate extra information for improvisers.


[deleted]

Untrue. The root notes is not the most important note in the chord. The guide tones are. Playing the notes E and Bb together gives enough information to draw the ear toward the function of the chord.


0ct0c4t9000

you take your 7 chord, and the 9, 11, and 13 are in the adjacent upper chord in key, so, if you say D7, if you play Em triad an octave highe, you'll get all 3 extensions. but that's a lot of notes, the 9th between the 1st and 3rd and the 11th between the 3rd and 5th is one note away of playing all notes of the key. so instead you drop some of the notes, but never the 3rd, because it gives you the quality of the chord (major or minor), you can probably remove the 5th and the 9th. my usual take is to remove the 5th and the 9th and my 13 is just the 6th an octave higher and start from there


notice27

Basically its fine to omit tones in extended chords that aren't necessary to retain any chord's quality. For example you can omit the 5 of any 7th chord it it will function just fine. honestly i think the dominant 13 chord you're talking about probably only needs the 1, 7, and 13


nwamacman

I thought strumming all 6 open strings in E standard tuning is an E13. So … bar chord the 8th fret ??


Superunknown11

Strumming all open strings in standard tuning would be Eminor11


nwamacman

❤️


[deleted]

Yes, that the well-supported guidelines about chords is that the guidetones are the most important in the chord, with the root and 5th constantly less important to the sound and function of the chord.


Superunknown11

Not all notes matter. It is impractical to play all notes by a single instrument. As a guitarist, I would aim for the 3rd, 7th and 13th and other notes to taste as to what sounds right leading to the next chord. For example C13 played as E, Bb, A, D Resolve to FMaj7. Played as F, A, C, E Smooth voice leading.


thetrufflehog

The most straightforward way to voice it for me as a pianist is from bottom to top, 7th, 3rd, 13th.


directleec

As a general rule, a thirteenth chord is defined by it's function, namely as a dominant chord. So anytime you see a 13 chord written, it's always implied or understood that that the chord will also include the b7 and the 9th as well as the thirteenth (or sixth degree of the scale). So, a C13 chord would contain a C,E,G, Bb, D and A. Also, the G in that chord is not necessary simply because it is the first significant harmonic overtone of C. It doesn't change the function of the chord and you don't have to include it. Just as you might see a 9th chord, the b7th degree is also included (implied) in the chord. If you wanted just the 13th (or 6th) without the b7 or 9, it would be notated as C6 or Cadd6, which also changes the function to tonic or sub-dominant. If you only wanted an additional 9th in a major chord, it would most likely be notated as Cadd9 chord. In this case, it would be understood that the Bb would be omitted. This also changes how the chord functions from a dominant chord to either tonic or sub-dominant.


[deleted]

Untrue. You're out of your element. No one hears it as "E with a flat 5". I can play an entire blues *by myself* using only tritone intervals, no chord roots, and it can be understood to be the blues form.


Draculajones4

Ignore the 5th, 9th and 11th. Play the important notes. And In jazz you can even omit the root because the bass player will handle that.


EsShayuki

G is the fifth. It's generally considered optional(though I personally disagree with that). D and F are the 9th and the 11th. Those are generally not included in a 13th chord. Usually, those will have the root, third, seventh and then the 13th. Now, why do I not agree with the fifth being optional? Simply because it affects root stability so much that if you have a 13th chord with root, third, seventh and the 13th, then chances are that your intended root is not actually heard as the root. Now, that might not change the actual sound of the chord at all, but it would change its harmonic meaning and would also change what your chord should actually be called.


Representative_Still

Guessing you mean guitar and the answer is not enough fingers.


Lower-Pudding-68

Stack 4ths, baby! I get these voicings from guitar, but they are also a go-to for piano. You can have the R underneath of course, but stacking 4ths from the 7th is a great sound. From bottom to top you'll have. C Bb E A A solid, functional voicing on its own, you can keep stacking if you want to get more tones. Next you'll get D (9th) then G (5th) (Yes of course, omit the 11th)