Why do some chords have numbers on them?/ Having trouble figuring out chords

Hector Trejo said:

Sus = suspension. In my head I think of it as substitution. So like a C Major chord would have “Root 3rd 5th”. This is “C E G” respectively. A CSUS4 chord would “substitute” the 3rd with the 4th of C. The fourth of C is F. So CSUS4 = “C F G”

Add = Add notes. So in CADD4, you’d still keep your third. CADD4 = “C E F G”

Adding a 5 is just implying power chords which are just root and fifth. So a C5 = “C G”
D#5 is a D# power chord. “D# A#”

Hope this helps!!

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Chris Johnston said:

Not much to add as everyone has covered the most Important points - but one thing to note is that when you see a 9, 11 or 13 in a chord - it really means a 2nd, 4th or 6th only up the octave - or you could always count 9, 11 or 13 notes up your Major Scale and you'll still land on them. These are called upper extensions or extended chords


For example:
- a Cadd9 would be C E G D - (the D being the 9) you wouldn't really call it Cadd2
- A G13 would have G B D F A E (the E being the 13) - you typically won't be able to fret all the notes in big chords like these, so most guitarists leave out the 11th, 5th or 9th as they don't take away any of the chord's character

Also it's worth pointing out too, if you have a Minor chord with a 6th or 13th then it will still be referring to the Natural 6th/13th in the Dorian Mode, not the b6/b13 in your Natural Minor Scale.

However a Minor7 chord will have the b7 found in your Natural Minor Scale

It's really best to learn these things gradually and take your time, it's kinda like a language

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Ids Schiere said:

Basically a chord is made up of intervals. For example and E5 refers to a chord where E is the root and it has the root and the fifth(so a power chord). Then the most basic chord is the E which has a root, third and fifth. Then anything that alters from that basic E chord needs to be named according to what you changed so you add the intervals in the name so it's clear.

E7 would be a major chord with a minor seventh
E9 would be a major chord with minor seventh and a ninth
Emaj7 would be a major chord with a major seventh and so forth

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Ids Schiere said:

Maj7 does no have a fourth, and so forth is a saying to say that's how it works.

E7 is a dominant seventh chord that's a major triad with a minor third. If it's a major seventh it's a an Emaj7.

My advice to you is to take it one step at a time because it can be pretty overwhelming. Start with the learning how to build triads(those are in the lessons) and when you understand those go into the extended ones. There's no shortcut and wanting to learn all of it in one go is just not going to happen

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Ids Schiere said:

Maj7 does no have a fourth, and so forth is a saying to say that's how it works.

E7 is a dominant seventh chord that's a major triad with a minor third. If it's a major seventh it's a an Emaj7.

My advice to you is to take it one step at a time because it can be pretty overwhelming. Start with the learning how to build triads(those are in the lessons) and when you understand those go into the extended ones. There's no shortcut and wanting to learn all of it in one go is just not going to happen

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Chris Johnston said:

Csus2 does exist haha (CDG)! It's the name Cadd2 that isn't commonly used for the Cadd9 chord (CEGD)

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Chris Johnston said:

You'll totally get there man! The difference with the Csus2 is that it doesn't have a 3rd - the 'sus2' is basically short hand for 'suspending the third and making it a 2nd (D) CDG'. The Cadd9 is short hand for C (CEG) & adding the 9th (D) - CEGD

It seems overwhelming when everyone's firing all the jargon at you in paragraphs but take it slow and you'll 100% get your brain around it

This video is a must for getting to understand all this stuff, Rick Beato is a beast - his theory lessons are no BS straight to the point videos!

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Chris Johnston said:

The Root note will only change if you change the chord - So if I play a C Major, the root note will always be C - even if the note on the lowest string of the Guitar is another note from the chord (This would be called an Inversion) - If I changed the chord to D Major, D would now be the Root note of the chord. The Root note basically has naming rights of the Chord's 'note letter'.

If the chord is a sus chord, then the 'sus' is always to do with the deduction of the 3rd and the number that comes after the sus ( which will be 4 or 2) is what the 3rd is being replaced with. The intervals in a sus2 chord are: ROOT 2ND 5TH and the intervals of a Sus4 chord are: ROOT 4TH 5TH - Basically your either replacing the Major 3rd with a 4th or a 2nd when the chord is a Sus chord.

The way you'll want to get these in your brain is by listing all the chord qualities (Major, Minor, Major7, Minor7, Dominant 7, add9, sus2, sus4, etc) and learning/Memorizing which intervals make them up. Intervals are basically scale degrees from the scale that helped build the chords. They're like the DNA of chords, as they come from their parent scale (the gene pool - if you like haha)

You can think of the intervals as the ingredients of the chord - a way to achieve that chords sound/flavor. Learn which chord qualities you can use and learn their ingredients, then your chord knowledge will build up by knowing more chord ingredients for more chords

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• Sus only changes the 3rd note
• Add adds another note (can it add another 3rd 5th or 1st? or only 2-4-6-7?)
• Extended (I, don't know its chord name lol) makes the scale go from 1-7 to 1-9, 1-11 or 1-13?
• For major and minor chords, i guess you could say that a minor chord flats the 3rd degree of the major chord, so if it was a E its now an Eb or D# (Damn i feel like i'm getting good at this!)
• A diminished chord, flats the 5th so if its a D# scale it would be D# F F# Or Gb (btw my mind just got blown figuring out how piano chords are made) /Correction/ I've realized that the 5th on the D# scale isn't even a G, i know that from the circle of fifths each scale has a specific number o sharps/flats for the circle of fourths, but why isn't G the 5th? why is A# the 5th, for me it would be: D#-E-F-F#-G-G#-A why is it like that?
• (This is all so fascinating i love this) A major 7 chord, is simply a Major chord/Triad with a 7 on the top, has a really jazzy sound, love it(What's the difference between a Cmaj7 chord and a Cadd7 chord for example?)
• A minor7 chord is a bit different in the sense that it doesn't only add the 7th degree but it also flats the 3rd and 7th degree
• Dominant seventh chords flats the adds a 7th degree and flats it (Why isn't a power chord called a dominant 5th?)
• Augmented chords have the 5th raised to 1+ semitone so in C: C E G#

Chris Johnston said:

I'm so glad you're enjoying learning all of this man! You can see that you're motivated to know it I'll go point by point:

- Spot on

- Add chords can add: 9, 11, 13 - This is because most chords in general are built from the R 3 & 5 - So if you added them again the chord quality wouldn't change. Like a G guitar chord has more than 1 Root (I'd call it that instead of 1) & 3rd. The 9, 11, 13 are colour tones, hence why they can be added. You don't get 'add7' because a C chord with an added 7th is Cmajor 7 - this would be a Major 7th chord.

- Extended chords are all in the name, you're extending the intervals after the octave, 9th, 11th, 13th etc

- Yep! Minor chord spelling is R b3 5 - So it would be C Eb G - D# would be enharmonically incorrect as it would be considered a #2, which isn't how you're using it.

' Diminished flattens the 3rd & 5th - C Eb Gb - You're using a D# scale here - I'd reccomend thinking of it as Eb instead - this is because Eb is easy to spell & D# is a Theoretical key (not the most practical to spell/use)

Eb: Eb F G Ab Bb C D - see how it's alphabetical, no doubles note types like F, F#?

D# E# F## (yes double sharp!) G# A# B# C## - hopefully this proves my point

I would look into that Rowan J Parker Major Scale memorization video & the construction of a Major Scale to really get why G isn't the 5th but it's to do with the amount of semitone, tones you construct a Major Scale with.

- Love Maj7 chords! Theres no difference between a Cmaj7 and a Cadd7 apart from the fact you'll never hear it called 'add7' If you add a 7 to a Major chord, your turning it into a Maj7.

- Minor 7 chords are spelled R b3 5 b7 - So spot on!

- Spot on! Dom7 is R 3 5 b7 - The combination of the 3 5 & b7 gives it that dominant quality. The power chord is just called a power chord because it's got the Root & 5th in it - two.really stable tones that don't conform to Maj, Min or Dom7 because there's no 3rd or 7th so it has the 'power' to take on all e forms technically. And it just sounds powerful, hence why it's used it Rock & Metal.

- Spot on with Augmented too man, well done!

A cool trick with Aug triads is that they are Symmetrical - meaning any note can be treated as the Root! So for every Aug chord you know, you really know 3.

CEG# - C Augmented ,
E G# B# (really C) - E augmented
G# B# (really C) D## (Really E) - G# Augmented

It's the same for Diminished 7th chords - R b3 b5 bb7 - (yep double flat)

The main thing is that you understand how all of this stuff sounds so you can hear a chord and be like 'That's Augmented' - the Theory should always label what you hear

Hopefully this is some more to chew on!

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chris_is_cool said:

You got many things right already... To answer your questions, it is best to start considering the chromatic scale.

The chromatic scale is the mother of all scales, it is all 12 notes in an octave. So on a piano, it would be all white and black keys taken together. Written out for one octave from C to C:
C - C# / Db - D - D# / Eb - E - F - F# / Gb - G - G# / Ab - A - A# / Bb - B - C
The interval names (third, fifth, etc...) are always taken to be those of the major scale, any alteration of that is written out (so flat third instead of third for example). The C major scale is simply C D E F G A B C, and by comparing it with the chromatic scale, you can get the intervall structure of the major scale:
whole step - whole - half - whole - whole - whole - half,
where a half step is actually just one step in the chromatic scale, and a whole step is two steps in the chromatic scale.

To come to your example, lets NOT do D# but Eb instead, as they are basically the same note. By doing the w w h w w w h pattern, you will notice that Eb major has the following notes:
Eb - F - G - Ab - Bb - C - D - Eb
So you see, a third up from Eb is G and a fifth up from Eb is Bb.

Why did we not do D# major, if it is actually the same? For now, lets just say for aesthetic reasons, we never want to mix # and b in a major scale, and we always want to have every letter only once (so no D and D# in the same scale). So the D# major scale, while being the exact same notes as the Eb major scale, would be written as
D# - E# (= F, but we need the E something) - F## (= G) - G# - A# - B# - C## ( = D ) - D#.
Really ugly, but those are the spelling rules. But still, the fifth of D# is A# (= Bb).

But, if we are not explicitely writing out a major scale, we can ignore these fine prints and just use D# and Eb completely interchangeably, so don't worry too much about this.

Now, to answer your other questions:

• Correct, sus replaces the (major or minor) third with the 2nd or 4th degree
• The root note, the third and fifth can occur as often as they want in a chord (well, on a 6 string guitar they can't occur THAT often, but you know what I mean), we don't write that down. So C - E - G - C - E - G is still just a normal C major chord, we don't care or say how many times each note appears.
• Extended chords will add new ingrediants to the basic root-third-fifth triad, and we usually count upwards from 7, so (dominant or major) 7 chords, 9 chords, 11 chords etc. We usually want these additional notes in upper octaves anyway, we don't want a note clustering in the bass.
• Yup, a minor chord is the exact same as a major chord, but with a flat third. The natural minor scale, when compared to the major intervals, is root - 2nd - flat 3rd - 4th - 5th - flat 6th - flat 7th, or in steps: whole - half - whole - whole - half - whole - whole
• A diminished chord is a chord with a flat third and a flat fifth. The D# natural minor is D# - E# - F# - G# - A# - B - C# - D#, so D#dim is D# - F# (minor 3) - A (flattened A#)
• I hope, I answered your other questions about the whole constructing a scale and intervals buisness above, otherwise jsut ask.
• Cadd7 and Cmaj7 would be the same, but we would call it Cmaj7. add is usually used for everything above that (9, 11, see above), when we dont want to add lower notes as well. C9 would have the b7 and the 9, Cadd9 only adds the 9 for example.
• A power chord is just root and fifth, it just takes away one note from the basic triad root - third - fifth. A dominant 7 chord (or jsut 7 chord) adds the b7 as you correctly noticed. That name comes from classical harmonic theory, don't worry about it too much.
• Correct about augmented chords.

Hope that helps, that was a really long one, haha

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chris_is_cool said:

Well, the major third in the D# scale is the ugly F##. Yeah, it's absolutely the same thing as a G, but sadly, in the context of the D# major scale we have to call it F##. Anyway, the flat third would then be one half-step below the F## (or G), so it is F#. So the F# is what we need for the D# minor and D# diminished chords.

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