Chord Symbols
Cmaj9 is not a code you have to memorise. It is a recipe read left to right, and once you know the order you can play a symbol you have never seen before.
- 4 parts
- root, quality, extension, bass
- read left to right
which styles use it
- Jazz
- Pop
- Session work
- Worship
In short
A chord symbol has up to four parts in a fixed order. First the root letter, which tells you the bottom note. Then the quality, which is major unless something says otherwise. Then any extension or alteration in numbers. Finally a slash and a bass note, if the lowest note is not the root.
A chord symbol is shorthand written by someone in a hurry for someone else in a hurry. It says what to play and leaves how to play it entirely up to you.
How to build it
- The letter is the root
A capital letter, sometimes with a sharp or a flat. That is the note the chord is named after, and usually the lowest note you play.
- The quality comes next
Nothing means major. A small m or min means minor. A triangle or maj means a major seventh. A circle means diminished, a plus means augmented, and dim and aug are spelled out in plainer charts.
- Numbers add notes, and the slash moves the bottom
7, 9, 11 and 13 stack further thirds on top. A flat or sharp before a number alters that note. A slash at the end names a different bass note without changing the chord above it.
Where you run into this
- On every lead sheet, chord chart and songbook written in the last century.
- Above the staff in sheet music, where they tell a pianist what to do with the left hand.
- In your own notes, which is where the habit of writing them properly pays off first.
The variants side by side
The same chord, four ways of writing it:
- Cmaj7, the clearest
- CM7, common and easy to misread as minor
- C triangle 7, standard in jazz
- CΔ, the same thing with the 7 left off