How Can Anyone Play This Chord?

tgk03

tgk03

Ain't it crazy?
I just bought Mickey Bakers Jazz Book Vol. I

First lesson, learning some chords. Chord no. 6: D13b9b5. WTF?!!

Is the open D string supposed to ring? If I get my fingers high enough to for it to ring it prevents my my pinky from fretting the 2nd and 1st strings.

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That's a pretty lame voicing for a D chord. However, for Ab7#9, it's perfect. The same notes for D13(b9,b5) are the notes for Ab7(#9,#11). Having the root and the 5th for an Ab chord right on the bottom of the chord really destroys any sense that D is the root of that. The Ab is just too low as well.

Sans the open string, that's a pretty common 7#9 voicing. Probably #2 behind the Purple Haze one.
 
Ok, I just tried it and that is a pretty ass-sounding chord. :embarrassed:

I kept my thumb pretty low under the 7th fret and that made it a lot easier to reach. The first time I tried it I did mute out the D string, but by shifting my thumb to 7 it was easy.
 
Poparad said:
That's a pretty lame voicing for a D chord. However, for Ab7#9, it's perfect. The same notes for D13(b9,b5) are the notes for Ab7(#9,#11). Having the root and the 5th for an Ab chord right on the bottom of the chord really destroys any sense that D is the root of that. The Ab is just too low as well.

Sans the open string, that's a pretty common 7#9 voicing. Probably #2 behind the Purple Haze one.
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i had a teacher that tried to get me to play out of the Mickey Baker book. the whole point of the first few pages is to get you to learn as many impossible shapes as possible and be able to change through them. so he shows you different names for the same chord, even if they don't make sense as a voicing. i think he wants you to come to the conclusion that its a shitty voicing for D, but is good for A on your own.
 
Some of the most difficult chords to describe when someone says stop, what are you playing, are passing chords, where you've got some bass going, hitting a few notes with a chord in there somewhere.
Stevie Wonder gave me a chord in the early seventies that Journey used as the end of verse spacey chord for "Who's Crying Now". Sometimes you gotta stretch.

as always, John Watt
 
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Help!I'maRock! said:
i had a teacher that tried to get me to play out of the Mickey Baker book. the whole point of the first few pages is to get you to learn as many impossible shapes as possible and be able to change through them. so he shows you different names for the same chord, even if they don't make sense as a voicing. i think he wants you to come to the conclusion that its a shitty voicing for D, but is good for A on your own.
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I'd need to check my folder to be sure, but now that you mention it I think my old guitar teacher had me do that too.
 
To me the best learning method was making barre chords with your open chords.
If you can play a "C" chord, major and minor, as a barre chord,
then a lot of Jimi and jazz is waiting for you.

as always, John Watt
 
It is physically impossible for me to play it. I can't get my pinky to bar across the 1st and 2nd strings. Since there are easier alternate voicings, I am not going to bother with this one any more. :mad:

I bought this book 'cuz Tommy Harkenrider recommended it in a post a while back. I dig the stuff he plays so I thought I'd give it a go.
 
after some fiddling, I can play it on Electric, no way I could change in and out of it. . . And No matter what it's hard to get that open D to ring.
 
yeah... okay... maybe I should have riffed on the chord being presented. Maybe seeing it in a different perspective will let you get it happening. Forget the open D string for the time being, and look at what this basically is, not some jazz extrapolation. That's a G# barre chord with a root seventh, with an added seventh and ninth, or is that an eleventh. The seventh and ninth are a sixteenth, making this a G#7+16, or the seventh and eleventh make an eighteenth, a G#7+18. The open D string? Yeah... an open D string. Mute it if you can't let it be. That's jazzy.

When I saw Frank Zappa in Edmonton, walking around a dirt floor in a livestock arena, wandering around behind the flatbeds they were playing on, I wanted to meet and shake hands with Aynsley Dunbar, his drummer, and the player of one of the best drums solos I've ever heard. Frank's roadie was walking by with his S.G. and I asked if I could strum a chord on it. Frank turned to me and said, what chord will you play? I said a Gmsus+16. He said do you really know that chord, and I said it's easy for a lefty to play. He asked me to show him.

Jazz is tough. You have to know the vocabulary first. A long time later, when I was talking with McCoy Tyner for twenty minutes between sets, we didn't mention notes.

Previously in this thread I got going about my toughest chord to play, but unable to make a diagram online I thought a description wasn't worthwhile.
But I'd like to add this. Sometimes working on a chord you can't play makes it easier for others to come along.
I got this from a Stevie Wonder record back in the late seventies, helping a band (The Spartans) figure out a song.
I never saw it as a song chord until I played "Who's Crying Now" by Journey, who use it as an effects driven spacey chord at the end of a verse.
This helped me get it down, able to jump on it and slide it up and down, not that Neil Schon does that.
In fact, there is no guitar during the beginning of this song, Neil only coming in with this chord as an effect, easy to set up.

Lower E: open (or second fret)
A: second fret
D: fourth
G: open
B: third
E: open

This is the lowest position for this chord, looking like a Bm7.
Journey uses it in Gm, as a Dm variant.

as always, John Watt
 
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I'm loving this chord! I'm using it as an passing Ab chord to a A 13th. It sounds like I know what I'm doing.

Btw - keep working on it. I have small hands and I'm able to get it. I anchor my thumb behind my first finger at the 4th fret.

Here's a great exorcise to help you stretch. Play a D Major 7th at the 9th fret like this.

E - 9
B - 10
G - 11
D - 12
A - X
E - X

Now move down the fret board one finger at a time until you get to a Db Major 7th. So the next chord in the exorcise wound be

E - 8
B - 10
G - 11
D - 12
A - X
E - X

The next one would be

E - 8
B - 9
G - 11
D - 12
A - X
E - X

Next:

E - 8
B - 9
G - 10
D - 12
A - X
E - X

And then finally the we get to the destination a Db Major 7th and the whole cycle begins again. Work you way down the neck. If you start feeling pain STOP and take a stretch and rest for a while. Don't force yourself it will come naturally. Once you get around the A or Ab area the stretches start getting hairy.

E - 8
B - 9
G - 10
D - 11
A - X
E - X

After a while you should be able to play this scary mother:

E - 3
B - 7
G - 5
D - 5
A - X
E - X

I got that from an old GP article on Al DiMeola.
 
go cat go said:
I'm loving this chord! I'm using it as an passing Ab chord to a A 13th. It sounds like I know what I'm doing.

Btw - keep working on it. I have small hands and I'm able to get it. I anchor my thumb behind my first finger at the 4th fret.

Here's a great exorcise to help you stretch. Play a D Major 7th at the 9th fret like this.

E - 9
B - 10
G - 11
D - 12
A - X
E - X

Now move down the fret board one finger at a time until you get to a Db Major 7th. So the next chord in the exorcise wound be

E - 8
B - 10
G - 11
D - 12
A - X
E - X

The next one would be

E - 8
B - 9
G - 11
D - 12
A - X
E - X

Next:

E - 8
B - 9
G - 10
D - 12
A - X
E - X

And then finally the we get to the destination a Db Major 7th and the whole cycle begins again. Work you way down the neck. If you start feeling pain STOP and take a stretch and rest for a while. Don't force yourself it will come naturally. Once you get around the A or Ab area the stretches start getting hairy.

E - 8
B - 9
G - 10
D - 11
A - X
E - X

After a while you should be able to play this scary mother:

E - 3
B - 7
G - 5
D - 5
A - X
E - X

I got that from an old GP article on Al DiMeola.
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That is a great exercise!..I still use that as a warm up..I think I must have seen the same GP article..:)
 
Wow good tip. I am reading this at work now. I have a class tonight so I will try this tomorrow.

Thanks!
 
OP, don't give up on the chord. I'm on lesson 3 of Baker's book now and it took me almost a month to learn that chord. It IS very possible to get fluently. If I can do it anyone can learn it. I have very short fingers.

Absolutely none of the chords in the baker book are designed to have open strings ring out. So ignore that D string and mute it. If you peak further into the book he tells you to keep using the same forms for chords 1-6 for the first 5 lessons or so. In these lessons you start playing in keys other than G. All of the voicings are designed to be movable and transposed to whatever key the exercise is in.

A trick I picked up from watching Pebber Brown lessons on youtube for learning chords is to first get your fingers into the position and make sure all the proper strings are ringing out/muted. Now repeatedly take your hand off, put it on your lap for just long enough for your hand to relax, and attempt to put all the fingers in the right spot at the exact same time. If you don't already do this you'll be surprised at how fast you learn new chords . I know I was.
 
Awesome mthomps, thanks! I won't stress over that open D anymore. It makes sense that it should be a movable chord. And I can handle it easily enough without worrying about that D.
 
Glad to help.

One thing I've noticed about the book is a lack of explanations. He is always telling us to transpose all lessons to all the keys yet in this lesson or that lesson it will be a previous lesson in a new key or a few new keys.

Take it for what it is I guess. I've spent some time looking through it and it just seems to be brilliantly laid out. I have a lot of questions unanswered about elaborating what he explicitly means, but the book just seems to be a full on assault on hammering chord subs and flashy jazz progressions into your ears, head and fingers.

If you don't already have a good understanding of theory the book can be impossibly cryptic. Being able to put a chord function to each chord in the lessons helps A LOT.
 
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