Taking it up to 11...

Last month was chord month for me, and this time I've been looking at 11^th chord voicings.

A quick recap for those unfamiliar with extended chord voicings – chords are made from notes stacked in intervals of thirds, that is play the root, miss the 2nd, play the 3rd, miss the 4th play the 5th. That gives us a basic three note chord or triad. These chords can be extended using the 7^th, 9^th, 11^th and 13^th intervals (the 9^th is the 2^nd up an octave, similarly, the 11^th is the 4^th and the 13^th is the 6^th, each bumped up an octave).

As always with extended chords, there are many different variations but the three most important are the major, minor and dominant voicings – major will always contain a 3^rd and a 7^th, minor will always contain a b3 and b7, dominant will always contain a 3 and a b7. It's important to bear these rules in mind as we look at the practicalities of voicing these chords on the guitar.

So this gives us three chords to look at:

Maj11 – R 3 5 7 9 11

Min11 – R b3 5 b7 9 11

11 (for dominant chords, we just use the number of the highest chord extension) – R 3 5 b7 9 11

This starts to cause a few problems, as we're now needing six notes in the chord, making for some very unwieldy voicings. Time to trim the fat!

We need a root to base the chord off, so that stays..

We need a 3^rd to define whether the chord is major or minor, so that stays..

The 5^th, however, is the same for major, minor, or dominant, so that can go.

The 7^th stays as it defines whether the chord is major or dominant

The 9^th is the same for major, minor, or dominant, so that can go.

The 11^th is our highest extension, so that stays.

Now we can voice our chord simply R 3 7 11 (major) R b3 b7 11 (minor) R 3 b7 11 (dominant)

Voicing the chord as four note chord means it can be inverted – built from the R, 3, 7, or 11. For example, C11 – R 3 b7 11, C E Bb F can be started from any of its four component notes.

Along the top four strings (D G B E) this will give us voicings of:

E Bb C F

F C E Bb

Bb E F C

C F Bb E

Notice that we've dispensed with the traditional rules of chord inversions – that stuff is for keyboard players who only have one place to play each note and two hands to grab their chords with. We're grabbing clusters of notes that fall under the fingers.

Getting to grips with chord voicings this way is an extremely cool way of mapping out the fretboard and learning which note is where, and for that very reason I'm not going to put fret boxes up here, I want you guys to do the homework! Once you've mapped your chord out on the D-E strings, try it on the middle (A D G B) and low (E A D G) string groups. Then try the minor and major voicings. Then change the key and do it again. Do that for a month, and you'll be hooked on the shimmery, sci fi, haunting ethereal sound of these chords, you'll almost certainly have discovered a few new riff ideas and you'll know the fretboard far more comprehensively than trying to memorise any fretboard map will ever get you!

Have fun – see you next month for the Kumoi Pentatonic...