Chord Of The Week 28/1/17 Church Chords - a C#m9 in the key of C#minor

bigjon

Following on from last week's ending chord of the song "We Belong To The Day", here's the C#m9 voicing I used at the start of the verse:

C#m9: x4x440

played as an arpeggio picking the strings in order 5,1,2,3.

The individual notes of the chord are C# x4xxxx (root), B xxx4xx (7th), D# xxxx4x (9th), and E xxxxx0 (m3rd).

It's often good arranging to take one of the lower degrees of the chord and displace it up by an octave to spread out the sound and stop it becoming too mushy. In this case the more conventional way to play a C#m9 chord would be x4244x with the order low-to-high root m3rd 7th 9th, but I've taken the m3rd E note at xx2xxx and sent it up an octave to xxxxx0. It also creates a juicy clash with the D# a semitone below it at xxxx4x, so you get two notes a semitone apart ringing into each other xxxx40.

I've recorded the chords I used, you can hear this week's chord at 0:02 - 

and I stuck the ending C#(m)7add11 from last week with the tapped semi-harmonics in there as well, you can hear that chord at 0:19

bigjon

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