Chord Of The Week 6/5/17 - an E5add9 from "What Can I Do" by The Corrs

bigjonbigjon Frets: 680
Finishing off the intro chord progression of this song - A5add9 5xx45x, E/G# 4xx45x, D5add9 x5x25x and now

E5add9: x7x47x

As you can see, this chord is the same as the 3rd chord in the progression only two frets higher. The reason we are doing it as a new chord this week is I mis-transcribed the D5add9 x5x25x as a D5add9add13 x5x45x when I covered it three weeks ago (we have had a two-week interruption to mark the death on April 15th of Allan Holdsworth), and I was corrected in the comments by Evo.

In this open-voiced E5add9 chord you can clearly here the influence of the song "What I Am" by Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians. It uses the same intervals as the A5add9 chord at the start of the progression but stacked in a different order, this time sequential:
E x7xxxx the root
B xxx4xx the 5th
F# xxxx7x the 9th (a 5th above the fifth, so the chord is made up of two "stacked fifths")

Chords created from stacked 5ths can be very effective in making the sound spacious and the tonality ambiguous between major and minor: whereas chords made by stacking fourths quickly reach the minor 3rd on the fourth stack (e.g. E A D G = Em7add11), stacked fifths take one stack longer to reach a chord-defining third, in this case the major 3rd (e.g. E B F# C# G#) = Eadd9add13.

See "Message In A Bottle" by The Police for a famous chord progression which relies heavily on stacked 5ths - C#5add9 x468xx, A5add9 x024xx, B5add9 x246xx, F#5add9 246xxx

You can hear this week's chord at 0:06 in this video

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