Chord Of The Week 17/1/15 - The Steely Dan Chord. NB the top Google result is wrong!

bigjon

Coming up to 18 months in to Chord Of The Week, and having played 2 Steely Dan songs at a dep gig last Sunday I realised we still haven't done the Steely Dan chord! I've just checked on Google, clicked on the top Google result for 'The Steely Dan chord', and thought, hang on, that's not what I know as the Steely Dan chord! The proper one is dissected by Donald Fagen himself in this link, showing the build up of harmony for the chorus of 'Peg', and he first plays the chord itself at 2:49 -

It is a Gadd9/B: start with a G chord G-B-D, add the ninth note of the major scale (starting with G as the first) which is an A. Move the B down to be the bass note, move the A down to the bottom of the stack of notes above the bass note, and move the G right to the top. So the notes from low pitch to high are B-A-D-G.
Because the note cluster apart from the bass note does not contain the 3rd, the B, I think of the main part of the chord as a Gsus2 rather than a Gadd9, so although it's probably slightly less harmonically informative I think of the chord as Gsus2/B for the purposes of voicing it on the guitar -
Gsus2/B: 7x778x
To get the progression for Peg, play a Cmaj7 8x998 first - instant Steely Dan in a packet!

bigjon

Chord Of The Week Index updated with 76 discussions at

http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/598/chord-of-the-week-index#latest

bigjon

For the record, the top Google result today on searching 'The Steely Dan Chord' was

http://www.hakwright.co.uk/steelydan/mu-major.html

GuyBoden

No disrespect to your good chord posts, I'd just like to mention that the most common chords are just the 1st, 3rd and 5th of a scale, you can then add any extra notes. If you know your fretboard and scales, you can play them in any inversion anywhere.

Good stuff