African American Christian Wedding Songs : Understanding the C6 Chord

Friday, September 28, 2012

Understanding the C6 Chord

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If you're playing pop music on the piano you have doubtless run across the C6 chord. There is a simple rationale that will help you to easily form chords like this, and the same rationale applies to all chords of this type, such as G6 or F6, and many more.

Assuming you know how to play a C chord, the C6 is a simple addition, a suffix, as it were.

The notes of the C chord are, from the bottom, C, E and G. The G is on the top.

To form the C6 chord, add a fourth note, A, on the top, right next to the G.

Now you have four notes: from the bottom, C, E, G, and A.

There's another way to calculate the C6 chord, or any sixth chord, for that matter.

From the top note (whatever it is, in the case of C6, it is G) play the next note, which is black, skip it, and go to the next note, which is A.

In other words, play a C chord (C, E, and G) and then skip the next note above the G, whether white or black, and add the note above that.

The reason for this rationale is that not all sixth chords will have a WHITE fourth note. Some will have a black key as the fourth note.

The sixth chord is useful in many styles, but predominantly in standard songs of the Big Band era, although you will see examples in all eras.

Gershwin, Rodgers and Berlin were all crazy for the sixth chord, and generally one can substitute a sixth chord for almost any major triad (three note chord.)

The probable reason for the addition of the sixth chord goes all the way back to Bach, who used them in many pieces in very subtle ways. But the real reason that the sixth chord became used more and more as history progressed was that it added thickness.

Think about it for a moment: a four note chord is thirty three percent thicker than a three note chord. As time went on, composers accepted this thicker sound and began to use it everywhere. The golden age of its usage was the Big Band era.

As the 1950's came in, the sixth chord became dated and reminded listeners of the previous era, and was thus shunned until the Beatles, who adopted it as a subtle sign of nostalgia.

Here's a link to a page where you can hear and play the sound of a C6 chord on a virtual piano: http://www.pianoiseasy2.com/dictionaryC6.html

John Aschenbrenner is the author of the Piano by Number series which you can see at http://www.pianoiseasy2.com/. It's a great way to get kids started happily at the piano.