What's a good chord for Phrygian?

Harmony & Theory
#21

I guess I wouldn’t really consider that specifically a Phrygian chord. It certainly does occur in the e Phrygian mode, and you definitely want to add it in any progression that you plan to write around an e Phrygian mode (particularly putting the seventh in the bass) but it would need that additional context and support of a progression around it to specifically place it in Phrygian, as would dmin add9.

A chord that functions as the root of the tonic mode and contains the characteristic note(s) as a tension(s), wouldn’t really need that progression context or as much of it.

#22

It’s got all the notes that create the Phrygian sound minus the b3. Sounds Phrygian to me.

Or fsus2/e. Yes context matters for sure, as does the voicing, but to find one chord that creates a Phrygian sound, that’s the closest thing I can think of.

#23

So does dmin/e but the point is that both need the additional support to specifically place them in the Phrygian mode, where as Emin add b9 (most likely with an omitted 3rd) doesn’t. That chord alone screams Phrygian with out anything else to support it. It’s one of the only times outside of a dominant that you would ever use a b9 tension.

#24

We’ll have to agree to disagree on that one

#25

What’s there to disagree about? We’re talking about functional harmony. emin7b9 contains everything that is Phrygian. Fmaj7, and dmin7 add9 are more ambiguous, and need e to be firmly established as the tonic to place them in the Phrygian mode.

#26

I understand what you’re saying technically of course. However I’ll just say that tooling around on a keyboard with that chord is why I posted this thread. In E, if we do EBGDF over E in the bass, stacking thirds as you’d normally do in other modes, the result just sounds… bad. I’ll qualify that by saying “bad to me”. It’s just kind of a blur of sound.

BDFA over E sounds better to me. If you do it close voicing it reads very clearly as a min7b5 sitting over the tonic bass note. And at least that sounds like something. Whether it gives you that flamenco-y sound that you’re looking for in Phrygian or not, that’s probably personal preference. As @JakeEstner points out, maybe this mode seems to care more about the precise structure of the intervals, and not just whether certain tones are present, to get the right effect.

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#27

F/E works for me. Especially if that bass note is being hit very obviously. Add a B on top of the E for a power chord, that’s pretty Phrygian to my ears.

Em with w b9 isn’t the best choice IMO - not as common a sound and depending on registers can be more like a G13 voicing. It is in the literal sense Phrygian especially if E is the clear bass note, however it is we go a bit more colloquial with the term “functional” harmony, I think Emaddb2 has less practical use than some of these other options.

I’ll put another nudge in there for Wayne shorter tunes, where we’ll hear these types of chords (single chords, not progressions) used in some “real music”

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#28

Look, there is no absolute in this. What I’m saying is not wrong. You are not the authority on what I hear. The question was a chord that spells out Phrygian, I gave one. You don’t hear it that way, that’s fine.

#29

Why is it any of these variations that contains the third, I don’t like? It starts to sounds like too many other possibilities. And why is that different than in other modes where you can just stack stuff and it mostly sounds fine?

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#30

Re intervals, There’s some interesting stuff I’ve spent a fair amount of time with regarding things like b9 and #9 on ma7, at face value that seems like a big “nope” but there are some principles of harmonics, intervals, and registers that can actually make that stuff sound great and even “pretty”, at least to me. But it is 100% about the intervals and registers that make it work.

I once heard Jerry Bergonzi warming up on a piano and talking about new voicings he was working on…he used terminology like #15, b21, etc

#31

1.Probably because it sounds too much like G7.

The tritone with F and B Already suggests dominant, getting the root in there maybe pushes further in that direction. Writing this without an instrument in hand right now so that’s a sound-memory guess.

2.probably because b9 intervals are awkward and Phrygian is the only mode w b9 as a characteristic note so it has to be in there.

#32

Perhaps similiarly, on keyboard I call Fmaj7 over G in the bass a “13”, and I call Fmaj over G an “11”. But it’s always bothered me that if I include the third, I don’t like it any more. So the “real” 13 and 11, spelled out fully, I don’t like. But I still call those subtracted voicings 11 and 13, just because it’s easy and everybody knows what I’m talking about anyway. Is this a similar phenomenon. Edit: Are these not really 11s and 13s, but would they be better termed something else, like slash chords, due to the missing interval?

#33

Interesting observation. When I (try to) write phrygian non-dominant riffs, I noticed I like to use a lot the semitone dissonance but indeed not the minor third so much.

This is something I particularly like which only uses tonic and b9 (notice the tuning):

D-------0------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
B-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
G-----8--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
D----0---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A---6----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
D-0------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
let all notes ring

whatever else you put in the riff has to of course consolidate the harmony (if you start throwing in major 3rds and whatnot it’ll of course sound like something else)

#34

Nat 11 on dominant in my mind makes it not dominant anymore, but 7sus4. Even if the third is present, that’s a sus to me. Some people online in other discussion groups have pushed back HARD at this, but at risk of sounding arrogant, I don’t think many of them really had any familiarity with extended sus chords, slash chords, Herbie, Wayne etc. In the jazz world any of these are common voicings for “G7sus”: F/G, Fma7/G, Dm7/

It’s common that we don’t really get literal about 13 chords for that reason - a dominant 13 colloquially needs just the 13 basically, doesn’t have to have the 9 or 11. For a bigger extended sound we’ll usually use #11, but that has less use as a V7 chord.

Asterisk: people like Monk would use dominant with natural 11 but it was, well…Monky.

Anyway, yes this all comes back to that b9 interval issue - B a b9th under a higher C in the voicing G B D F A C makes for some mud.

For whatever it’s worth when I want a big extended sus sound I start From D with the g in the bass.

So G bass, then can be D F A C E G B - note B is the last extension. Then it’s an extension on 7sus4 - odd and counterintuitive but I see it as a pretty solid “fact” wrt to how these sounds work. And it sounds nice.

When I want a big extended altered dominant I come from F in Ab melodic minor
So G bass, then the stacking is F Ab B Eb G Bb Db.

Extended unaltered dominants are tough. Because 11 turns into a sus.

#11 is awesome in the “stacking” approach if a tonic chord or subV or backdoor dominant, or other cases where a dominant isn’t acting as a “V7 of”. Like the IV in a blues.

#35

All right so I’m posting here because I’m out getting my booster and diddling on my phone. Right after that last post I walked into a coffee shop and Herbie Hancock is on the sound system, and there’s a poster on the bulletin board for an upcoming Wayne Shorter concert. IT’S A SIGN, PEOPLE, EVERYONE HAS TO LEARN EXTENDED MODAL VOICINGS

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#36

This is an awesome sound. I had to do it on the keyboard. It’s basically a lydian dominant sound, but with G in the bass. So Db lydian dominant, over G. Then resolve to something pretty in C. Very nice, very nice.

Seeing the Db shape is the faster way to access it on a keyboard for me. Or just visualizing G altered. Pet peeve, I never think in terms of “melodic minor a half step above”. Melodic minor is of no relevance to me harmonically when going for “dominant” sounds. It’s altered. Or a dom substitution.

And now we’re officially off topic!

#37

I had to do it.

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image1470×832 76 KB

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#38

Playing the Fmaj7 in the third inversion with E as the bass note creates this tension effect which I really love, because the F functions as the flat 9 in relation to E in this inversion. And we all know that the flat 9 is possibly the most delicious and evil interval of all time :slight_smile:

I use phrygian with this chord progression: i - bII
Or in case of a guitar in standard tuning with E as the tonic, it would be an E minor chord to an Fmaj7/E. Love that sound.

Sometimes you can also use the bvii chord, too. In this case D minor. But all other chords tend to make it sound more like standard aeolian than phrygian.

Edit: as a side note, I don’t know a lot about theory, so there are possibly a thousand more use scenarios, but I know that this one works well.

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#39

This is some nerdy ISH right here!

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#40

That’s generally the danger or rather caveat with modal progressions in general. They typically can only be two to three chord movements or vamps at most because you have to establish a tonic, and sometimes that tonic is either unstable and wants to resolve itself, or doesn’t have strong resolutions to it.

The more chords in key that you try to use in any modal piece, the more and more you will start to pull away from what you want as the tonic, and more and more towards the plain ol’ Major mode, or minor mode of the key.

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