Upper Structures

 

Here Aimee Nolte shows us some ways we can stack a triad on top of the dominant 7th chord

1 3 5 ♭7

She plays this chord in C so it’s called C7. The 5th is so obvious and bland she often leaves it out, giving what’s called a ‘shell voicing’

1 3 ♭7

Then she puts a triad on top of this, giving ‘upper structures’ like a 9th, 11th or 13th.

This is right at my level now, so I like it. Let me say a bit about it.

The first one she plays is called a ‘C dominant 13 flat 9’. This amounts to

1 3 ♭7...