Minor 9th Shapes in Music

Let's have a look at some other minor 9th shapes. In Cloud 9, you used the 3, 5, 7, 9 shape on:

• E minor
• D minor
• G minor
• F minor

Those are all the same shape, just moving around.

We also used a little three-note fragment for G minor. Do you remember? You could call that 9, 3, 5. We use that for F minor as well.

Useful Voicings

This is a very useful little voicing for minor chords. It's quite a popular shape that Bill Evans used fairly frequently.

And so, work it out. Although we didn't use it, you could apply this for D minor and E minor.

• It's a very compact voicing.
• It has the third in, but doesn't have the seventh in.

Inverting Voicings

Going back to the 3, 5, 7, 9 voicings, they can, of course, be inverted.

So let's take G minor, root in the left hand. We don't need that, so I'm going to invert the rootless shape.

This is what we get:

• Those are all basically the same shape as B flat major 7.
• We're getting this nice clash in the middle of the chord between the seventh and the root, which is a feature.
• Or, it could be on the bottom of the chord, creating a nice effect.

Commonly Used Shapes

The most commonly used one out of those four is:

• 7, 9, 3, 5: 7th on the bottom
• 3, 5, 7, 9: which we've done already.

It will pay you to remember those numbers. For instance, E minor can be:

• 3, 5, 7, 9
• 7, 9, 3, 5

These are inversions of each other.

Experimenting with Chords

When you play Cloud 9, you can experiment with these chords:

• Try playing the chords in the gaps between the right hand phrases.
• Another approach could be to play the chords in the same rhythm.

That's a very common block chord style.

• Or you could just play them all on the beat, keeping time.
• Or play them off the beat.

I'll demonstrate that with a metronome:

1. 1, 2, 3, 4 (playing with a swing feel)
2. If it was straight, you could still do it: A 1, 2, 3, and 4.

Creating Jazz Feel

So, the chords are not on the beat anymore. That makes everything much more jazzy, because otherwise you're just duplicating the rhythm that the bass player is already doing.

Upcoming Piece

The next piece we're going to look at features the minor ninth chord very heavily:

Song for My Father by Horace Silver.

He really goes to town on this shape with his space, featuring it all the way through the tune. He also plays:

• E flat 9
• D flat 9
• C 9

There's a big emphasis on the ninths, both minor and dominant chords in this tune.