Chord Of The Week 7/2/15 - the Robben Ford chord

bigjon

Possibly the longest chord name we've covered so far! - C7#11add13(no 3rd): 8 x 8 11 10 x

Used in 'Ain't Got Nothing But The Blues' to suddenly send things mysterious at 1:07 in this vid at the bottom of this post

The song is in the key of Bb, but at this point he is filling a couple of bars of the vi chord Gminor.  He creates a Im IV7 Im progression in Gminor to provide movement within the bar but adds the #11 F# to the IV chord, nowhere in the diatonic home key of Bb. Instead he treats the Gm as the home key and selects notes from the jazzier sounding G melodic minor G A Bb C D E F# G, which also provides the foundation of the solo fills he plays around this section.

In relation to the root note of C for this particular chord the notes of G melodic minor give a C Lydian Dominant scale, which has maj3rd (E), b7 (Bb), & #11 (F#) as its key features. The chord voicing he actually plays leaves out the major 3rd and adds the 13th, giving a voicing of root, b7, #11 13, = C Bb F# A.

The trick for applying it in your own playing is to play chords derived from the melodic minor scale of the home key you're playing in, rather than the Aeolian minor or Dorian minor that you're probably more used to. Have fun!

bigjon

Chord of the week index updated with 79 discussions at http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/598/chord-of-the-week-index