Chord Of The Week 1/3/14 - Moveable m7add11 chords

bigjon

A favourite of mine - think 'Walking On The Moon' by The Police (Dm7add11 x53533) or, less cool-ly, 'Mandela Day' by Simple Minds (Gm7add11 3xx311).

Formula is 1 b3 5 7 11, although in practice it is often better to leave out the 5 to allow the b3 and the 11 room to breathe.

So in Aminor an Am7add11 would be A C (E) G D.

The sharp-eyed among you will spot that this can be re-arranged as stacked 4ths (E) A D G C or stacked 5ths C G D A (E), so all your preferred quartal and quintal harmony voicings come into play. I might specify them later if I can be bothered but I catalogued them pretty extensively on the Dminor thread at http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/110/chord-of-the-week-3-8-13-dm/p1

Also if you take the stacked 4ths version, move the (E) to the end, and repeat the root note A at the top, you get A D G C (E) (A), which is a barre straight across the strings at the 5th fret! So our first voicing (an E-shape barre-chord) is - 

Bbm7add11: 666666 !!

For now, I'll take the 5 CAGED shapes and construct m7add11 chords around them:

C shape - Dbm7add11: x42422

A shape - Bbm7add11: x11121

G shape - Abm7add11: 424422

E shape - Fm7add11: 131344

D shape - Ebm7add11: xx1122

What moveable m7add11 chords can you come up with?

bigjon

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

HAL9000

I've always loved the sound of F#m11 ( I assume the 7 doesn't need to be mentioned as the 11 already implies it) played as... 002440 - always sounds harmonically very rich to me presumably because of the open strings. You can hear it in Fairport Convention's Who Knows Where The Time Goes where the intro and the main body of the song plays alternate bars of open E (001220) and F#m11 (002440).. Interestingly it's a chord that seems to work equally well in the key of D - another nice progression is D, F#m11, G.

viz

It's a beautiful chord over an F# Hal, but I think you'd have to play that with an F# note in it somewhere to qualify as an F# chord, otherwise it's just an A sus aug4 isn't it? - which is albeit in the relative major. Something like 202440 would sound good. Of course when the bass player plays the F# then it's clearly in F# minor, but otherwise not, I don't think.

HAL9000

Ah, maybe my mistake - I was starting at the top E - is that wrong? The chord I was thinking of would be...

Bottom E - Open 

A             - 4th fret 

D             - 4th fret 

G            - 2nd fret 

B            - Open 

Top E     - Open 

 Apologies.

viz

Ah got you. Yep that makes more sense - very nice.

bigjon

I notate my chords thick string -> thin string left to right, hence Hal's chord would be 044200, and a proper F#m7add11 version would be 244200, a chord which I associate with Mr Big's How Do You What You're Doing and a Michael Monroe one from the same period who's name escapes me. From this it can be seen that the chord is ideal for Hair-Metal power ballads and stadium glam-rock.

This chord-shape IS a moveable one IF you have pond-skater fingers like Allan Holdsworth AND cheat by leaving the root-note to the bassist. He plays Am7add11 x77533.

viz

It's also in the george michael version of miss sarajevo if memory serves.

mellowsun

How about

0 (2) 5 2 5 3

bigjon

Just added a new #chordoftheweek on Pull Up To The Bumper by Grace Jones, which is based on D(m)7add11: x5758x
http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/89745/chord-of-the-week-19-11-16-a-d-m-7add11-from-pull-up-to-the-bumper-by-grace-jones