Because not all the notes in the scale are meant to be home base. Some are meant to guide us home. That’s why the aural shape of the scale leads us to the root.
Dissonance. The 3 of the one in a major scale doesn’t get along with the one of the fourth. They hate each other! Take that damn E out of the C chord and they’ll get on much better! In some cases. 
I think they sound good together :
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@JakeEstner If you stack the chords just right they sound nice. In a constant structure deharmonized C diad rhythm played in 11/17 an F note sounds amazing over the 3 inversion C over its b6th.
Hey @millionrainbows, F is the character note in C major. Sitting on it breaks down a sense of progression in context because it represents the seventh in the related dominant’s tritone. It sounds unstable, not necessarily bad.
On a contrasting note, the major scale associated with the IV, lydian, is considered “the most consonant scale” by Berklee theory, and is sometimes substituted. It has a #4 interval in it, and yet is “most consonant,” and there are no “avoid” notes, despite the presence of a tritone. Which is to say, probably best to hesitate before normatively labeling sounds. Happy Friday.
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I think that if one hangs on the fourth long enough on a relatively static vamp, we start to hear a “sus chord-ish” superimposition. Fun! Cheers, D
I think they sound great together. The major 7th is the tone that clashes, but if you revoice that chord so you can get a nice big add4 sort of thing ringing out, maybe like this:
|----------|
|--------6-|
|------9---|
|---10-----|
|----------|
|-8--------|I mean, one, instant Joe Satriani, but two, that sounds awesome, to me.
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Definitely. To the point many of us have made, this type of dissonance sounds ‘better’ when it’s not in the low register. That’s why I like your above voicing. I personally love dissonance in chords. Straight up triads make me yawn. When its in a low register, a minor second just sounds like mud, no matter what the harmonic context (i.e. resolution etc.).
Increasingly tangentally related - as you go lower, even triads can start to sound a little more dissonant, somehow, which has always sort of impressed me. Once you get down to seven string range, something like an A chord inverted over the C# on the low B (B-E-A, fretted 2-5-4) sounds, well… unexpected.
Curious if anybody checked out the audio/notation example I posted yesterday . when you factor in the synth brass track, it’s basically non stop maj7 with the 4th, with many add4 voicings in the guitar (usually some instrument is playing the 7 as well, so we are getting that tritone.) If looking for add4 voicings on guitar there are a whole bunch of them there.
audio example:
–> (notation)
Putting aside overall aesthetic and just focusing on “does it sound wrong” or “does it sound like the ‘bad’ kind of dissonance” I’m curious what people think - in part because there’s a difference between “this will sound dissonant” and listening to something asking “does this sound dissonant to me?”
Ultimately I’d imagine our interest is in the sound more so that the rule.
Through transcribing I’ve often found that things that didn’t sound dissonant or “wrong” then looked pretty funky once I put them on paper. A classic example of that is in the “we don’t need no education” solo at the end, Gilmour briefly plays a B natural note while the synth plays a Bb major chord, and he does not resolve it up or down a half step. I think for a lot of folks if they saw that on paper in another context they’d comment that it is wrong and will sound bad, but obviously very few people either notice or care about that particular clash in that super famous solo, and Gilmour’s usually revered as one of the most melodic/pleasant of all the classic rock guitar greats, so it’s not like the effect produced was super jarring and chaotic.
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My response to you followed listening to the track. Thanks for sharing and have a good weekend.
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ah yes, because of the threading I didn’t catch that it was a response to the track.
But then that’s kind of a thing I was getting to - does F sound bad over Cma7…or do E and/or B sound bad over Csus4…or does it all work just depending on context…
the low registers thing, put an F on the bass of a Cma7 and it’s actually closer to an F ma7 sound (and something I kind of like, actually)
Obviously just chillin on an F while somebody does a Cma7 strum can be harsh, but all these things are about how one uses them
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I don’t think that chord you guys are describing is a C. It’s a third inversion Fmaj7. A fifth describes that particular chord. Which chord tones are represented? For C it’s the root and third. For F it’s root ,fifth and major 7. Just because C is the bass and in this case an octave doesn’t make it a C major.
Dead giveaway. There’s an F in chord.
Playing an f over a Cmajor sounds like shit.
I started to, then quickly realized I was going to want a guitar to follow along and really understand what I was hearing, and I was taking a couple minutes break from work and didnt want to get THAT distracted. I’ll try to come back to it though. 
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A C chord contains a G as the major third. The F is a single whole tone away from the major third making them very close in the scale. The 4th normally replaces the 3rd i.e. suspended 4th chord. Move the F an octave higher and it becomes an 11th which can sound better as it is further away from the 3rd. Also, the third provides the mood or a chord, happy (major) vs sad (minor) and adding the 4th interferes with this.
E is a C chord’s major third. G is its 5th.
F is a half step away from the major 3rd (E) which is even closer than a whole tone. That’s why it is so dissonant sounding.
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I think the flat 9th interval of say E4 to F5 in the context of a C major chord is generally considered/accepted as more dissonant than a half step E4 to F4.
that is, chord on the left is less common than chord on the right:
I’ll confess to abusing the shit out of that Badd4 voicing - you’re right, it’s got this awesome spacey droning qwuality to it that isn’t discordant at all. Shifting the fretted notes down to A for, um, I guess that would make an Aadd9 with the E and B ringing above, sounds so cool that I have to consciously not do it every opportunituy I have, too.
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As in martial arts, we must learn to play the barre chord shape thingy with the open E and B strings so that we learn that we don’t have to play the barre chord shape thingy with the open E and B strings, and instead only use it when it is absolutely necessary.
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