Chord Of The Week 29/8/15 - The Scuttle Buttin' E7#9 chord

bigjonbigjon Frets: 680
Continuing the Stevie Ray Vaughan tribute around the 25th anniversary of his death, I did Scuttle Buttin' at last week's blues jam, so here's the SRV variant on the Hendrix E7#9 chord from that song.
The Hendrix Chord version is E7#9 07678x but SRV plays it down in open position as 0x2133. Only he plays it with his 1st finger on the 4th string and barres his third finger across the top two strings, so he misses out the 3rd string G# which is the 3rd of the chord, so he really plays

E7#9no3rd: 0x2x33

Which is EXACTLY the same as Em7! But the major 3rd is so strongly implied in the whole feel of the song, even though it's not actually played anywhere, that I feel it would be misleading to label this chord a minor chord in its context! So I'm arguing that a chord with a prominent minor 3rd (the #9 on the top string) and no major 3rd anywhere in the chord at all should nonetheless be labelled a major chord! Just looked it up in my Lightnin' Blues tab book and they evidently feel the same!

The chord occurs frequently throughout all 1 minute 53 seconds off the whole song in this YouTube link - 

0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 0reaction image Wisdom
Sign In or Register to comment.