Ninth Chords for C6 Lap Steel

Ninth chords as "grips".

Hello once again, we're going to shift gears a little bit and get into a warmer state of mind. We'll be looking specifically at The Hawaiian Wedding Song and Blue Hawaii in order to glean some lessons about how to make ninth chords.

I hope you guys were practicing that Bonus Lesson #2 from the last issue of STEEL MOJO NEWS, because the techniques you learned to form the three note C7 chord slant is going to be put to further use for an even more colorful chord in this lesson.

But first let's do a quick review. The following example shows the notes and TAB for the three-note C7 chord we looked at in last issue's Bonus Lesson #2:

The end of your bar is on the 5th string, sixth fret, while the other two notes are on the 3rd and 2nd strings at the seventh fret. You now have a three note version of the C7 chord, which in the notation is marked as C7/Bb, which means C7 with B flat in the lowest note. Go back to the previous issue's C7 lesson if you need to review more detail about this chord.

Now, if you spent any time trying to get this chord in tune, you'll have what it takes to do this next lesson.

Example 1

We're going to take the C7 “shape” of the bar across the strings and move all the notes over a string to find that an even more colorful chord is discovered.

Observe your bar position carefully and compare it to the C7 chord earlier. You'll notice that your steel is on the same frets and using the same slant, however you're now shifted up to the next adjacent string. In other words, the end of your bar is now on the fourth string, you're skipping over the third string and the next two notes are on 2nd and 1st strings respectively.

Remember from our last lesson that we don't need the root note A in the chord to make it complete, but rather this chord has all the necessary elements it needs to create an A9--we have a C sharp, a G note and the the B natural, which is the 9th degree of A and where the chord gets its name.

Now, get ready to move this chord all over the neck!

Example 2

We're going to use the arrangement of the Hawaiian Wedding Song, found on LIL STEEL V.1 to practice this chord in a musical way.

The following example of ninth chords is taken from measures 9 and 10 found on your V.1 TAB printout entitled Hawaiian Wedding Song.

The measure starts off with a little two-note C chord up at the 12th fret, followed by a single note passage before we are presented with our ninth chord in the second measure.

Practice the same technique used with the other slants--try sliding into the chord from below.

The D6 that follows the D9 uses the same "grip" as the ninth chord before it, but on adjacent strings. Remember in the last lesson we discussed "grips" and here's a real-world example of how knowing your grips will help you quickly hop between different sets of strings.

Use the thumb, index and middle fingers of the right hand to pluck these chords.

Bonus Exercise 1

The following musical example is an exercise that builds on what you just learned and gives you everything in one punch.

Use the exercise to train your picking hand to memorize the "grip" you'll need to know for these chords. At the same time, you'll be practicing moving this slant around the neck.

This is just an example, feel free to transpose it to different keys on the neck.

Bonus Exercise 2

Going a bit further, you can use your knowledge of these chords to spice up your playing on many, many tunes.

Let's use the LIL STEEL V.1 version of Blue Hawaii, which is also available as a stand-alone DVD video tutorial for C6 lap steel guitar.

The following simple phrase in found in measure 21 of the PDF chart found on your LIL STEEL V.1 Enhanced CD.

It's a simple melody as you'll see below:

Load the backing back for this song into your player of choice (Blue Hawaii is Track 9 on V.1). During this section the band is cranking out a C7 tonality, while you--the lead instrument--are introducing a D natural on the second beat.

Since the D note is the 9th degree of the C scale, we can use the C9 chord grip here instead of just playing a single D note. See the following TAB for example:

Practice this a few times and you'll notice that the phrase is played almost exactly like the ninth chords in Hawaiian Wedding Song above, only 2 frets down the neck.

If you're looking for a fun way to play more ninth chords while learning a ton of cool songs, be sure to avail yourselves of the C6 lap steel guitar learning resources found here.

Enjoy your ninth chords, I'll be back soon with another non-pedal focused steel guitar lesson!

Josh Cho

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C9 alternative questions (with answers) Not rated yet
Josh, Can you play the 5th G in place of the 3rd E when playing C9th, or is it wrong?

This:

D 10
Bb 10
G 10

Instead of yours:

D ...

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