Minor 6 chord question

[Oscar67]

The notes in 6, m7 and M7 chords make sense to me. The 6 in m6 does not. Both natural minor and harmonic minor contain the b6; only the ascending melodic minor scale contains a 6. To my ears, a m6 with a b6 sounds perfectly OK. So why is there a 6 in a m6 chord? And wouldn’t it be more logical to call it something like m#6 instead?

[ragman1]

why is there a 6 in a m6 chord?

I'm not sure anyone really knows. But then why add a #11 to a M7 chord? Because it sounds nice, I suppose

[Oscar67]

I'm not sure anyone really knows. But then why add a #11 to a M7 chord? Because it sounds nice, I suppose

In that case, the #11 is part of the chord’s name so it’s explicit. In the m6, I’d assume the notes to be part of the scale unless otherwise indicated. 1-b3-5-b6 would strike me as Cm while 1-b3-5-6 would strike me as Cm#6.

[rpjazzguitar]

Do I have this right? The question is, why not make it R b3 5 and b6?

So, in the key of A the chord would be A C E F?

That's an Fmaj7/A. Perfectly useful chord. Doesn't sound the same as Am6.

Or is the question about naming the chord?

For naming chords, as I understand it, you start from the root and consider the chord as if it is in the key of the root. So, Am6 contains an F# because F# is the 6 in the key of A. Trying to do it some other way would probably be more confusing -- and the world would have to change.

[ragman1]

In that case, the #11 is part of the chord’s name so it’s explicit.

No, the chord is named after the #11 is added, not the other way round!

I see your point about calling it a #6, though. Minor chords occur in 3 different major keys. Am occurs in C, F and G major. Apparently the F# comes from G major only (and the F# wouldn't be called a #6 then). It's the principle that chords are built in thirds from scales.

But if all three minor scales, natural, harmonic and melodic, are harmonised in the normal way, none of them produce a m6 chord. So I guess it comes back to its sounding nice.

[Christian Miller]

The notes in 6, m7 and M7 chords make sense to me. The 6 in m6 does not. Both natural minor and harmonic minor contain the b6; only the ascending melodic minor scale contains a 6. To my ears, a m6 with a b6 sounds perfectly OK. So why is there a 6 in a m6 chord? And wouldn’t it be more logical to call it something like m#6 instead?

b6 is quite a dissonant note against the minor triad, like having a 4th against a major triad. Nothing wrong with dissonance, but these notes tend to want to resolve. At least that’s general perception.

OTOH putting a major sixth on a minor triad has been a common jazz voicing since at least the 30s.

m7b13 can sound like an inversion of a major 9

Don’t look for too much logic in chord symbols lol, it’s a system that evolved over time, and started with the most common harmonies represented simply

[Jonah]

The notes in 6, m7 and M7 chords make sense to me. The 6 in m6 does not. Both natural minor and harmonic minor contain the b6; only the ascending melodic minor scale contains a 6. To my ears, a m6 with a b6 sounds perfectly OK. So why is there a 6 in a m6 chord? And wouldn’t it be more logical to call it something like m#6 instead?

First... when you say as ending MM you relate it to classical MM .. in jazz it is used more generically being a scale as a scope of note.

Second... you can also call it Dorian chord if you wish scale reference

Third... everything works in context..

Where do you apply your chord? II, III, VI, I .. in major or on minor key? Or modal context...

In conventional tunes in major b6 will be awkward on II, ok on III (but sounds like in version of I and IV major 7 respectively), and it turn into augmented triad on I... (or you'll hey a weird clash of 5 and b6)

You can do anything of course and make it convincibg but it will be far from conventional functional harmonic thinking.


I think m6 basically has a 'Dorian' harmony nature... when you use major IV

Good morning, Heatache..
Lots of it folky music

Also as well as with 6 chord it can be considered as a sub for clashy ma7 or too dominant sounding m7 working fine on other degrees

Another way to think of that 6 as borrowed from prallel major ... this chord has a double nature

[ragman1]

See? I told you, no one really knows :-)

[Christian Miller]

It’s history. Minor sixth chords were used early on. So m6 is easy to write and read. m7b6 chords are more recent.

[Oscar67]

The question is, why not make it R b3 5 and b6? Or is the question about naming the chord?

Both. I’m still at the bottom of my learning curve and trying to get my head around this stuff.

Natural minor is 1-2-b3-4-5-b6-b7 so in the key of Cm we get C-D-Eb-F-G-Ab-Bb. Minor triad is 1-b3-5, minor 7th is 1-b3-5-b7, all the notes are in the scale. So:
Cm = C-Eb-G
Cm7 = C-Eb-G-Bb
Cm6 = C-Eb-G-Ab
But in fact Cm6 contains an A which is not in the Cm scale. And this deviation is not indicated in the chord’s name. This is where I get lost. You mention Am. As with Cm6, there’s not a b6 but a 6 in the chord (F#) which is not in the scale and not indicated in the chord’s name. The logic (false or real) that I see in the notes of the m7 chord doesn’t seem to apply to the m6 chord. I’d like to understand why.

[Oscar67]

Lots of new responses when I was typing the above post! Thanks for chiming in everyone!

[ragman1]

It’s history. Minor sixth chords were used early on.

Quite, but that's not an explanation!

[ragman1]

"It's what some dude did back in the day and then others adopted it and it became habit" is one of the most common explanations for stuff ... in a wide array of fields btw

Sure, but I think Oscar wanted a more thorough theoretical explanation. Which I can't give him

[ragman1]

I mean, by the same token one could ask who thought of putting a #5 on a CM7 chord? Pretty interesting sound. And you can have M7#9 and M7#5#9 too.

The other thing is that a #11 on a C6 is legitimate and Am6 is an inversion of that, right?

I still think it's because someone discovered it sounds nice.

Incidentally, the mb6 is generally regarded as a M7 inversion. So Bmb6 - B G D F# - is GM7/B.

[Mark Fowler]

I'm no expert at any of this - I'm still learning much of this myself. Doesn't the minor 6 chord arise in a way that is similar to how the Major 6 chord arises? We don't get the later by stacking thirds... and I think of it as "I could stack thirds from the major scale to get a Maj7 chord... but sometimes that sounds to "stiff" and if I replace that diatonic 7 note with a diatonic 6 I get a chord that sounds less "stiff" but still works like the Maj 7 chord.

Now it seems you could do the same thing with a melodic minor scale... here the tonic minor chord would be a mM7 chord (which to my ear sounds even stiffer than a M7 chord!). So now you can replace that diatonic 7 with the diatonic 6 and get the m6 chord.

Doesn't that work?

I swear that within the last month or so there was a thread that talked about this.... "replacing the mM7 tonic chord with the m6 chord". I just can't remember where I saw that.

[starjasmine]

All of this (and more) comes out of Romantic and Impressionistic harmony.

@Christian, there's a typo in your post; I think you meant to say that b6 is dissonant against a major triad. As rp points out, minor triad with b6 is a first-inversion ma7 chord. A no-accidentals example is Fma7/A == ACEF.

The #5 comes from harmonic minor. Consider A natural minor: no sharps or flats. Sharp the G to make the naturally occurring v chord into a V7 chord (and also to make the 7th degree of the scale a leading tone back to the root) and you wind up with a naturally-occuring III+ma7 chord CEG#B.

A major sixth against a minor triad does occur naturally on ii in a major key. That's it. The other two minor chords in a major key have a naturally occurring m6, making them first-inversion major chords.

As I learned it, the shorthand for a minor 6th chord symbol takes this into account; if you write Am6 you are saying "A minor with a major 6th" (ACEF#) because "A minor with a minor 6th" is really "F major triad /A bass"

[Oscar67]

I mean, by the same token one could ask who thought of putting a #5 on a CM7 chord? Pretty interesting sound. And you can have M7#9 and M7#5#9 too.

Sure, but wouldn’t the name of the chord indicate that? Cm7#5? With Cm6, you just have to know about it having a note that’s not in the scale.

The other thing is that a #11 on a C6 is legitimate and Am6 is an inversion of that, right?

Based on the name, I can deduce how to play C6#11. I don’t quite get how that shows that Am6 shouldn’t be named Am#6.

I still think it's because someone discovered it sounds nice.

Sure seems that way. If it’s convention, then that’s OK.

[grahambop]

You can while away the time reading this lot:

Sixth chord - Wikipedia

[Christian Miller]

All of this (and more) comes out of Romantic and Impressionistic harmony.

@Christian, there's a typo in your post; I think you meant to say that b6 is dissonant against a major triad. As rp points out, minor triad with b6 is a first-inversion ma7 chord. A no-accidentals example is Fma7/A == ACEF.

I can’t see a typo, perhaps the way I put it was unclear; but what I said was the same as what you said and maybe rp too (I didn’t read his post) so Oscar has had the same basic info a few times.

[Christian Miller]

In other news, why is the 7 chord not a major seventh???!

[Christian Miller]

Both. I’m still at the bottom of my learning curve and trying to get my head around this stuff.

Natural minor is 1-2-b3-4-5-b6-b7 so in the key of Cm we get C-D-Eb-F-G-Ab-Bb. Minor triad is 1-b3-5, minor 7th is 1-b3-5-b7, all the notes are in the scale. So:
Cm = C-Eb-G
Cm7 = C-Eb-G-Bb
Cm6 = C-Eb-G-Ab
But in fact Cm6 contains an A which is not in the Cm scale. And this deviation is not indicated in the chord’s name. This is where I get lost. You mention Am. As with Cm6, there’s not a b6 but a 6 in the chord (F#) which is not in the scale and not indicated in the chord’s name. The logic (false or real) that I see in the notes of the m7 chord doesn’t seem to apply to the m6 chord. I’d like to understand why.

I think you’re going to have to accept this one and move on

[Christian Miller]

Here is the sound of the b6 on the minor; fantastically brooding, otherworldly and tense sound. perfect for horror, science fiction and suspense.

Here, it resolves but keeps coming back. Perhaps that’s why it doesn’t sound to me remotely like an inverted maj7 chord or something…

here it’s a two triad polychord, C on Em; so this should sound like a first inversion major seventh. It does not; perhaps because of the doubled E? This is a highly dualistic sound appropriately enough for the movie…. (major sevenths are fucking weird.)

This sounds more like a C major seventh (a straight arpeggio of it is played above the C to E bass; Floyd Welcome to Machine does the same thing) but definitely still E minor

(Did I mention that major sevenths are fucking weird? I’m not entirely convinced they exist as a corporate sound.)

[Christian Miller]

Here OP could answer 7th (G in A-minor) is in the A-minor scale, while the 6th isn't.



But sure that begs the question, why do we always notate the flat 7 as a just "7", while the major 7 gets weird stuff like Cmaj7 CM7 or a C-fucking-triangle?

And we would then notate a ii-V-I as Dm7 G7 C7 .. The 7th in defined by the notes in the underlying major scale.

You mean D7 G7 C7 (in C)?

That’s what figured bass does.

Common practice back when notation was standardized .. 6s where usually of the major kind and 7ths where usually flat and rarely used over tonic major chords. So you don't make a big deal out of the common versions, but mark when the uncommon ones like minor-b6 and major7 show up.

Our chord notation system does not reference underlying scales, but just reference the notes in the chord in a standardized way. Having a system where you need knowledge of the underlying scale in order to know what notes are demanded from you seems impractical ... and the most common versions get the easiest spelling.

Yeah, although if you look at Tunedex cards it’s even simpler, they just wrote straight major, minor, dom(7) and diminished mostly. The maj7 only comes in when charts get more detailed. So the first seventh they used was the most traditional one; on the dominant chord.

(Even in jazz 6ths weren’t always used. You get a lot of straight major and minor even in the post war era.)

I have a theory that the adoption of more detailed chord symbols is was shifted jazz harmony to ‘chord of the moment’ style analysis and eventually chord scale theory and non functional harmony.

A system where you have to know about the prevailing key to realise chords is easier on keys I think.

That said us nerdy jazz guitarists spend a lot of time practicing stuff such as modal clusters, chords through the mode, Goodrick cycles, Barry Harris etc that require that exact level of knowledge. Figured bass is the same sort of thing; knowledge of diatonic intervals.

Chord symbols are certainly easier from a chord grips point of view. Perhaps it was an encouraging factor in the popularity of the guitar?

[FwLineberry]

Sure, but wouldn’t the name of the chord indicate that? Cm7#5? With Cm6, you just have to know about it having a note that’s not in the scale.

Based on the name, I can deduce how to play C6#11. I don’t quite get how that shows that Am6 shouldn’t be named Am#6.


Sure seems that way. If it’s convention, then that’s OK.

All additions to the basic triad other than 7 are major by default. They require the addition of a modifier if something other than major is required (b9, #11, +, -, etc.) Thats how chord symbols work.

Chord symbols are absolute. They don't shift with the scale being used. So min6 means minor triad with a major 6 added. Calling it min#6 makes no sense when it comes to chord naming conventions. The #6 is equal to b7.

You could call it a min/maj6 chord but the maj is redundant. The 6 is already major by default.

Christian pointed out, above, that a better question is why the 7 is minor by default, when all other additions to the chord are major by default.

All of this comes down to historical usage and conventions adopted over time.

.

[ragman1]

starjasmine -

I forgot.

When both the harmonic and melodic minor scales are harmonised they produce a M7#5. So, in a major context, it's a borrowing thing. It's just that we don't normally use it.