A man’s favorite chord can change throughout his life, but finding one is about as rare as falling in love. Of course, there are thousands of chords out there, and in a way I love them all just the same.
In my teens, I was infatuated with Diminished chords, the ugly formation of minor thirds stacked on top of each other, dark and humorous as a carnival1; I made whole songs out of the diminished, then branching out into the half-whole, whole-tone, using tonal tricks borrowed from Zappa and Stravinsky. Tritone is love; tritone is life.
In college, I mellowed a bit I guess, and it was Major Sevenths, especially the excessive use of Maj.7ths a la Jazz, Sean Lennon, and Hum. The chord of love in the key of life.
Anyway, this is one of my all-time favorites—the E Major Thirteenth, which has a Major Seventh chord in it.
You can play it on guitar: 0-11-11-11-12-11. This guitar voicing of the E Major 13th is found in the Zappa song “Zoot Allures” at about the :42 mark.
The EM13 has every note of the E Major scale except the 4th, lending itself well to either Ionian or Lydian. It is a six-note chord with a bunch of fourths in the middle and a Major Third interval on top (between the fifth and the seventh). It sounds seductive and dreamy like we’ve just dropped melatonin after staying up all night. You can play this chord all day. Entire ballads have been written to this chord alone. Men have died for this chord. Chord is kill.
Look for the EM13 to be overused in every new Los Doggies song! Do you have a favorite chord? Please put it in the comments section below.
[1]
Yo but where my juggalettes at?
