Chord Of The Week 26/3/16 - the Dadd9no5th intro chord from 'Mr Brightside' by The Killers

bigjon · March 2016

*WARNING - the published tab by Hal Leonard is wrong! How they could mess up such an iconic chord is beyond me!*

This Thursday I'm the guitarist in the backing band for a charity live karaoke event, with a setlist of the top 60 most voted-for songs, so I've had to learn Mr Brightside at last. The song is composed in Dmajor but sounds in Db at everything was tuned down by a semi-tone.

The notes used in ascending order are low D xxxx3x, low E xxxxx0, F# xxxxx2, high D x x x x x 10, and high E x x x x x 12, which is a Dadd9 chord missing the 5th of the chord (the A note). The note order for the arpeggio is low D, F#, high D, F# then low E, high E, high D, F#. The arpeggio is made possible by taking a C-shape Dadd9no5th chord x54750 and moving the shape up the fretboard 12 frets to give -

Dadd9no5th: x 17 16 19 17 0

Play it with alternate picking: here's the tab

E---------------0----------

B-----------------17-------

G--------19----------19----

D-----16----16----------16-

A--17----------------------

E--------------------------

The chord can be seen in action at 0:04 in this vid but it looks like he couldn't be bothered to play it properly on the video shoot! :-)