Minor Chords – 9
Minor 9 Chord
The minor 9 chord is simply the minor 7 chord with the 9th note of the natural minor scale added.
Let’s use the A minor 7 chord to show this:
A Minor 7
A Minor 9
Chord Formula:
A minor 9 chord is made up of notes based on the intervals of the natural minor scale.
The minor 9 chord formula is 1-b3-5-b7-9 (i.e. the Root, b3rd, 5th, b7th and 9th notes of the natural minor scale).
Minor 9 Chord Formula:
A minor 9 chord is made up of notes based on the intervals of the natural minor scale.
The minor 9 chord formula is 1-b3-5-b7-9 (i.e. the Root, b3rd, 5th, b7th and 9th notes of the natural minor scale).
Important note for:
For guitarists especially; extended chords can be more difficult to play as you only have a finite number of fingers and options to position them on the fretboard.
It is general practice to leave out the 5th note because it is not needed for this chord to function harmonically, as the 9th note is more important.
The chord will also sound less cluttered with the 5th note omitted.
We recommend that you play minor 9 chords in root position only
(i.e. the root note being the lowest note in the chord).
You can use MusicWheels™ to discover all the other minor 9 chords.
Guitar Diagrams
Minor 9 Chords
Extended chords obviously contain more notes than triad chords.
It is also common practice to leave out some of the notes. If you wish to learn more about this, there are many advanced music theory sites to explore on the internet.
Here, we are only focusing on examples that are relatively easy to play and are moveable (generic) across the fretboard.
The diagram below shows 2 examples of the A minor 9 chord plus the generic minor 9 shapes.
The indigo note is the root note of the chord, for example:
– if you wish to play the D minor 9 chord then the indigo root note will be the note of D,
– if you wish to play the E minor 9 chord then the indigo root note will be the note of E, and so on.
Keyboard Diagrams
