Hendrix chord - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

, the dominant 79 chord is sometimes known colloquially as the Hendrix chord or Purple Haze chord, nicknamed for guitarist Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix

James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...

. While this sonority has been previously used in jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

and related styles, this particular chord form got its nickname because it was a favorite of Hendrix, who did a great deal to popularize its use in mainstream rock music.

The most notable Hendrix song that features the 79 chord is "Purple Haze

Purple Haze

"Purple Haze" is a song written in 1966 and recorded in 1967 by The Jimi Hendrix Experience and released as a single in both the United Kingdom and the United States. It appeared on their 1967 album Are You Experienced...

" (recorded 1967). The chord is also implied throughout "Foxy Lady

Foxy Lady

"Foxy Lady" is a song by The Jimi Hendrix Experience from their 1967 album Are You Experienced. It can also be found on a number of Hendrix's greatest hits compilations, including Smash Hits and Experience Hendrix: The Best of Jimi Hendrix...

" (1967). Both songs are from his 1967 album Are You Experienced?
Are You Experienced (album)
Are You Experienced is the debut album by English/American rock band The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Released in 1967, it was the first LP for Track Records...

. This harmonic device is one of many factors that contribute to "the dirty, raw, metallic, angular sounds of...[these] Hendrix songs". The earliest recorded evidence of his use of the chord is on the Isley Brothers "Testify, Parts 1 and 2" (1964), one of the few known recordings he made in the years prior to his solo career in 1966.

Harmony and scales

It is an example of how Hendrix would embellish chords "to add new colours to the music, often derived from his own roots in black music". "In essence," one author has written, the Hendrix chord is "the whole of the blues scale

Blues scale

The term blues scale is used to describe a few scales with differing numbers of pitches and related characteristics. See: blues.The hexatonic, or six note, blues scale consists of the minor pentatonic scale plus the 4th or 5th degree...

condensed into a single chord."

"It has a 'funky

Funk

Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...

' or 'bluesy' sound because of the friction generated between the major third and the augmented ninth," and may also be considered "jazzy" rather than bluesy and, "the sharp nine tends to be edgier, bluesier, and meaner sounding [than the flat nine]." While the dorian

Dorian mode

Due to historical confusion, Dorian mode or Doric mode can refer to three very different musical modes or diatonic scales, the Greek, the medieval, and the modern.- Greek Dorian mode :...

may be the scale most commonly used for the 79, the mixed third allows flexibility including the use of mixolydian, aeolian

Aeolian mode

The Aeolian mode is a musical mode or, in modern usage, a diatonic scale called the natural minor scale.The word "Aeolian" in the music theory of ancient Greece was an alternative name for what Aristoxenus called the Low Lydian tonos , nine semitones...

, and other modes. In jazz, 79 chords, along with 79 chords, are often employed as the dominant chord in a minor ii-V-I turnaround. For example, a ii V I in Cm could be played as: Dm75 - G79 - Cm7.

When performing "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" live Hendrix later used not only E79, the sharpened ninth chord on the tonic, but also D79 and C79 chords, the subtonic

Subtonic

In music, the subtonic or flattened seventh is the lowered or minor seventh degree of the scale, a whole step below the tonic, as opposed to the leading tone...

and submediant

Submediant

In music, the submediant is the sixth scale degree of the diatonic scale, the 'lower mediant' halfway between the tonic and the subdominant or 'lower dominant'...

, which would total nine and imply eleven notes, rather than only five.

Other uses

Though this chord was a favorite of Jimi Hendrix, it was not his exclusively and had been used in popular music as far back as the bebop

Bebop

Bebop differed drastically from the straightforward compositions of the swing era, and was instead characterized by fast tempos, asymmetrical phrasing, intricate melodies, and rhythm sections that expanded on their role as tempo-keepers...

era of the 1940s, notably on the Rachmaninoff

Sergei Rachmaninoff

Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...

-inspired introduction to Dizzy Gillespie

Dizzy Gillespie

John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie was an American jazz trumpet player, bandleader, singer, and composer dubbed "the sound of surprise".Together with Charlie Parker, he was a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz...

and Charlie Parker

Charlie Parker

Charles Parker, Jr. , famously called Bird or Yardbird, was an American jazz saxophonist and composer....

's arrangement of the popular standard "All the Things You Are

All the Things You Are

"All the Things You Are" is a song composed by Jerome Kern, with lyrics written by Oscar Hammerstein II.It was written for the musical Very Warm for May , where it was introduced by Hiram Sherman, Frances Mercer, Hollace Shaw, and Ralph Stuart...

." Instances of this chord appear with some regularity in blues and rhythm-and-blues of the 1950s and 1960s, but guitarist Billy Butler

Billy Butler

William Butler was an English professional footballer who was most famously a winger for Bolton Wanderers in the 1920s....

’s use of the chord in Bill Doggett

Bill Doggett

Bill Doggett was an American jazz and rhythm and blues pianist and organist. He is best known for his tracks, "Honky Tonk" and "Hippy Dippy", and variously working with The Ink Spots, Johnny Otis, Wynonie Harris, Ella Fitzgerald, and Louis Jordan.-Biography:William Ballard Doggett was born in...

’s "Hold It" (1958) proved so memorable that musicians began referring to it as the "Hold It" chord. The chord is employed in the John Coltrane

John Coltrane

John William Coltrane was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of modes in jazz and later was at the forefront of free jazz...

jazz standard "Blue Train". Use as a primary or tonic chord in funk and disco music of the seventies includes Heatwave

Heatwave (band)

Heatwave was an international funk/disco musical band featuring Americans Johnnie Wilder, Jr. and Keith Wilder of Dayton, Ohio, Englishman Rod Temperton , Swiss Mario Mantese , Czechoslovak Ernest "Bilbo" Berger , Jamaican Eric Johns and Briton Roy Carter .They were known for their successful...

's "Boogie Nights

Boogie Nights (song)

"Boogie Nights" is a 1976 single by the British-based funk-disco group Heatwave. It was the group's debut single and was written by Rod Temperton. It was included on Heatwave's debut album, Too Hot to Handle...

".
The chord is favored by Pixies lead guitarist Joey Santiago

Joey Santiago

Joey Santiago is a Filipino-American guitarist and composer. Active since 1986, Santiago is best known as the lead guitarist for the American alternative rock band Pixies. After the band's breakup in 1993, Santiago produced musical scores for film and television documentaries, and he formed The...

, with D7, reminiscent of the opening to "A Hard Day's Night

A Hard Day's Night (song)

"A Hard Day's Night" is a song by the English rock band The Beatles. Written by John Lennon, and credited to Lennon–McCartney, it was released on the movie soundtrack of the same name in 1964...

", opening and being called the "secret ingredient," to the song "Here Comes Your Man

Here Comes Your Man

"Here Comes Your Man" is a song by the American alternative rock band Pixies, written and sung by the band's frontman Black Francis. Produced by Gil Norton, it was released as the second single from the group's second album Doolittle in June 1989....

" and 'brutally scraped' F79 featured on the chorus to "Tame" against the three chord rhythm guitar part's D, C, and F chords.

The chord is present in the Mötley Crüe

Mötley Crüe

Mötley Crüe is an American heavy metal band formed in Los Angeles, California in 1981. The group was founded by bass guitarist Nikki Sixx and drummer Tommy Lee, who were later joined by lead guitarist Mick Mars and lead singer Vince Neil...

song "Dr. Feelgood

Dr. Feelgood (song)

"Dr. Feelgood" is a song by the American heavy metal band Mötley Crüe. It was released as the first single and is the title track to their fifth album. Although it is the title track, some versions of the album do not include it, such as the Korean edition...

" off the same title album during the main riff. It is used during the outro to Alice In Chains

Alice in Chains

Alice in Chains is an American rock band formed in Seattle, Washington, in 1987 by guitarist and songwriter Jerry Cantrell and original lead vocalist Layne Staley. The initial lineup was rounded out by drummer Sean Kinney, and bassist Mike Starr...

song "Would?

Would?

"Would?" is a single by grunge band Alice in Chains. The song first appeared on the soundtrack to the 1992 movie Singles, in which the members of Alice in Chains make a cameo appearance and later appeared on the band's album Dirt, also released in 1992...

".

The dominant 79 chord was also used in impressionist

Impressionist music

Impressionism in music was a tendency in European classical music, mainly in France, which appeared in the late nineteenth century and continued into the middle of the twentieth century. Similarly to its precursor in the visual arts, musical impressionism focuses on a suggestion and an atmosphere...

classical music. A good example can be heard in Claude Debussy

Claude Debussy

Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...

's Feuilles Mortes (Dead Leaves, 1913), where the unresolved, dissonant ninth chords (at least a, "C#7with
a "split third" and added minor ninth") help create an, "utterly sad, desolate character," throughout the piece.

Harmony and scales

Other uses

Further reading