Chord Of The Week 15/4/17 - a D5add9add13(no5th) from "What Can I Do?" by The Corrs

bigjon

Another songwriting tip - see what happens when you keep the top two notes of a chord the same and just change the bassnote! - More on the open-voiced progression which kicks off the song "What Can I Do" by The Corrs, we've covered the first chord A5add9 5xx45x and the second chord E/G# 4xx45x which just drops the bass note by a fret. Now for the third chord in the progression

D5add9add13(no5th)

The bass note changes again to a D x5xxxx, making this a IV chord in the key of A, but the top two notes don't change at all - and neither of them is part of a D chord! So we have a missing 3rd of F#, making this a D5 chord, formally ambiguous between major and minor though in the context of the song it is clearly functioning as a major chord. But we also have a missing 5th of A, so we need to add "(no5th)" to the end of our D5 chord! instead the two notes added are B xxx4xx the 13th and E xxxx5x the 9th, we notate these after the D5 in ascending numerical order, so D5add9add13.
The wide spacing of this chord (no two notes closer together than a fourth) and the choice of notes from outside the home triad, make this a very ethereal-sounding chord in this progression.

You can hear the chord at 0:04 in this video - 

bigjon

Chord Of The Week Index updated with 193 discussions at
http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/598/chord-of-the-week-index

Evo

Bit of a different approach, but you can also think of the progression as based around sus2 chords.

Asus2 | E/G# | Dsus2 | Esus2 |

I'm not entirely convinced I can hear the high E in the 3rd chord and when you step back and look at how it fits with sus2 chords then it all comes together quite nicely as a tasty variation on a simple |A |E | D | E | progression

Well, I say sus2 chords. You could equally call them add9 (no 3rd) chords but most of the time I just think of them as the "message in a bottle" chords

bigjon

Yes, it's a very close-run thing whether they should be regarded as sus2 or 5add9 chords. I tend towards the latter because at no point in the progression does the suspension resolve to the third, making them feel (to me) more like static 5add9s than dynamic sus2s.

Not sure what you mean about the high E on the third chord - that would be crucial to the sus2 argument surely as it's the 2nd / 9th degree of that D chord.

viz

Yes I think of them as 9ths rather than sus2s - same with Message in a Bottle, except for the 4th chord which resolves upwards to the minor 3rd. 

Evo

Yes, sorry, it was late. I meant the B. That way it's a regular sus2 chord rather than having the 13 extension in there which seems to stick out a bit.

I definitely agree that 9ths makes more practical sense, however the removal of the 3rd and addition of the 9th just seems to suggest the intention of the sus2. Coming back to that "ethereal" sound, the lack of resolution on the sus chords would definitely accomplish that.

bigjon

You're right. Sorry, I should have listened more carefully! It should be D5add9 x5x25x. I was always planning to do its equivalent E5add9 x7x47x, the 4th chord in the progression, for today's chord, but that will have to wait for another time now as I'm going to react to the death of Allan Holdsworth last Sunday with another batch of Holdsworth chords.