Favorite "odd" chords
 

All the guitarists out there: From your jamming or learning songs, post some of your favorite "odd" or abstract chords that you generally just don't see in every song (Or that matter every other song) that sound great.

5
3
0
2
3
X

X
9
9
7
9
X

0
2
3
0
X
2

2
4
2
3
4
2

X
X
6
7
X
5

More as I remember them....

~Jeremy~

Cool thread! There is a really weird made-up chord that is in a lot of Joan of Arc/Owls/Cap'N Jazz songs that I learned and use a lot.
It's like

x [lowest string]
7
7
5
6
5 [highest string]

hope I did that right. It's really hard on your fingers but it sounds cool.

I'll try these the next time I have my guitar out.

My absolute favorite chord is the Major 7th chord. It's the opening chord in "Hey, Wanna Throw Up? Get Me Naked" by Minus the Bear and "Here Is No Why" by Smashing Pumpkins

EMaj7:

0
0
1
1
2
0

AMaj7:

0
2
1
2
0
0

You can barre them easily.

2
4
4
5
2
0

The 'Bond' chord.

Used this in a unfinished song in my band. Works both ways.

0
7
0
4
0
5

Does anyone ever use B? I think I've seen it in one song.

most of these chords are pretty standard just with odd fingering. most of them are 7 chords, with the odd 4 on them.
i thnk glice will agree with me that nothing beat a good old (i will use tabs for the benefit of others)

F
B
D#
G#

EDIT: shit i didnt do it in tabs.
i meant

X
8
9
8
9
X

The Tristan chord. Great!

I never managed to interweave that one into one of my songs sucessfully.

Most of the chords I play are rather normal chords but just in an alternate tuning with an odd fingering

if you do a two beat you can play a lot of djangoesque gypsy beats with that chord

x-2-4-4-3-0
Just a Bminor with an E.

x-x-0-2-1-3
D7sus4 - the opening chord in A Hard Day's Night.

x-6-6-8-8-8
EbMaj7

6-6-8-7-8-6
AbMaj7

This is the most amazing chord ever.

1
X
X
71
17
15

5-5-4-0-3-0

3-3-2-0-0-0

0-7-6-8-7-x

0-7-4-4-4-x

x-x-3-0-1-3

x-0-2-4-2-4

I know some aren't too odd, but I like these.

by no means odd, but hendrix chord is fun to stab at, just figured out how to play vampire blues with it. It's position makes it easy to pick lil' riffs out of what is probs my most used scale on guitar, e minor I think.

0 7 6 7 8 0

Maj7#11s are great! G= 3-x-4-4-2-2

Same with -7b5's! F#= x-9-10-9-10-x

This one is used in i dreamed i dream x-x-x-8-6-0 three chromatic tones in a row Eb,E,F super dissonant.

I love those dissonant chords, one I can picture in my head -> x-9-11-13-10-9

x
x
x
3
3
x

Pretty simple chord, but effective. Sort of an E7 with the 5th dropped.


I think diminished chords may be the weirdest chords though, in a mechanical sense.

There's only 3 of them!

Worked incredibly well for this doom band I was farting about with earlier this year. Just look at it though - so many places to go with that beast.

is this even a real chord? i made it up

look at mine

2--3-21xx0
0--1-xxxx
xxxx
xx
1239739745---
:);):):(

A very unusual chord, but a chord nonetheless.

~Jeremy~

Speaking of named chords, how about the Petrushka chord?

Nothing beats the 'Sunday' double powerchord (ie two stacked 5ths).

Try it on piano.

its a C first inversion with the fourth and ninth and a major 7th...

i play a lot of inversion chords then?

i am also a fan of


x
x
x
x
2
2

and

x
x
x
x
4
4

the first one is i guess a G9 with a major 7th in the bass.
2nd one E7 first inversion with a neighboring tone or something like that, like the c# doesnt really belong there....
so yeah lots of inversions

From what I've learnt a chord has at least three notes, so this is just a double stop EDIT: with dead notes.

a shit i read satans chords wrong, i thought that the other string were open.
these are much simpler then, instead of chords they are just perfect fourths.... not unusual at all.

I was going to point this out, but I thought you were taking the piss.

0 = open
x = not played


i know fuck all about the technicalities of any of this instrument playing shit. i just play. i can't read music or anything.

The greatest guitarist of all time, Jimi Hendrix, was self-taught.

this is true. i'm no jimi hendrix, but i'm alright. never had a lesson in my life, i just seem to have a preternatural ability to play instruments.

You're a natural born guitar player. I may be as well, as I used to know someone who would spend hours playing on his electric guitar, and one day I asked him if I could have a go on it. All I did was strum it with my right hand, whilst moving my left hand up and down the neck of the guitar, randomly pressing down on some of the strings. The guy looked amazed and asked if I ever played the guitar before. When I told him I hadn't, he gave me a look of disbelief. :)

yeah i know i just wasnt thinking or something... my bad. . .

i tuned my guitar to an open augmented chord and am playing only the whole tone scales, so i am getting some pretty interesting chords out of it

I've always found whole-tone scales a bastard to work with. It either sounds like Messiaen or it sounds like shit (usually the latter); I never really know where to intervallically (I suppose this is my own fault for being so very early music).

im not sure that i understood the end of your sentence. but i see what you are saying. i still need to play with it a bt, and im mostly just goofing around. but on my acoustic i can get really interesting overtones with this tuning

Guitar is a very simple instrument to pick up and play without having any real knowledge of it what so ever if you think about it, but yet at the same time there is a LOT to guitar..... It all depends on how much you want to really know what you're playing.

In middle school we had guitar classes as an elective... One of the few states in the nation to do so. I got to take free guitar classes for two years. We didn't learn anything super advanced (Even in advanced guitar), but I definitely learned some common knowledge and more know-how.

~Jeremy~

Our school had a guitar class in high school, I took it my sophmore year. We learned really next to nothing, except I guess how to read tabs. We mostly learned stuff like how to play the national anthem. There wasn't really a lesson plan. It was kind of interesting though at the time, I was just learning how to play and there were all these other guys/girls around so I got to hear alot of different styles. It ended up not really being that interesting actually. Everyone pretty much only took to learning how to play Crazy Train or Sweet Home Alabama.

Guitar is probably one of the easier instruments to make sound halfway neat, as long as you're just a little inventive, and there are alot of levels to that quality. And beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So that's neat.

Really? If you honestly can play (and it's not just ego :P ) I heavily advise learning your music theory until you can bring it all up to memory. It may seem pointless, but I thought the same (I play piano) until I decided to learn theory and as I learnt it I noticed a dramatic difference in how well I could play as you don't have to memorise the notes as you can just remember what key you're playing it in and relate to that

x
x
x
x
2
0

not odd, just sexy