Easily Learn this Jazzy minor 11 Chord Progression

In an earlier article, I shared a voicing concept that makes it easy to construct a minor 11 chord. If you’re familiar with minor 11 chords, you know they have a unique sound. You can easily learn to play this jazzy sounding chord progression with this 11th chord voicing.

Just to recap the concept of the 11th chord voicing, I’ll briefly cover how to construct them.

Start with any minor chord.  To keep it simple, start out playing it in root position.

A minor chord in root position consists of the root, minor 3rd and 5th tones in that order.  We’ll look at a C minor triad as an example.minor 11Play this C minor chord in your left hand.minor 11

The rest of this minor 11th chord voicing will consist of a Major chord played in your right hand. Simply locate the tone that’s a whole step below the root of the minor chord played in your left hand.

In this example, it’s B flat.minor 11On this B flat tone, build a Major chord which is B flat Major.  A Major chord consists of the root, 3rd and 5th tones.minor 11The result of these two triads is this minor 11th chord voicing.minor 11

 

Now take a minute to discern the structure of this chord. By breaking it down, you can see that it’s two triads stacked on top of one another. One is Major and the other is minor.minor 11This is referred to as an upper structure triad. The upper structure concept is simply a way of defining the upper notes of an extended chord that are those of a Major or minor triad.

Now onto the minor 11th chord progression. It’s not necessarily in any particular key and you’ll find that some chords move through the circle of 5ths. But keep in mind that a chord progression such as this one can move anywhere because they all sound neutral due to the 11th tone.

We’ll start out with the Cm11 chord that we covered earlier. Remember to think of them as two triads stacked on top of one another.minor 11

We’ll then progress to F minor 11. (E flat over F minor)minor 11Notice that the two triads the F minor 11 chord is composed of are not in root position like the two chords that compose the Cm11 chord. They’re both in 2nd inversion.

It’s very necessary to be familiar with chord inversions. Without them, each chord in this minor 11 chord progression would be in root position and sound exactly the same. Inversions give the same chords a variety of sounds.

Now on to E flat minor 11. (D flat Major over E flat minor)minor 11A flat minor 11. (G flat Major over A flat minor)minor 11B minor 11 (A Major over B minor)minor 11

E minor 11 (D Major over E minor)minor 11A minor 11 (G Major over A minor)minor 11

D minor 11 (C Major over D minor)D flat minor 11 (B Major over D flat minor)

Study this minor 11 chord progression.  By recognizing and understanding the upper structure triad concept, you can create them in any key and inversion.  Take this concept to any key to create your own minor 11 chords and progressions.

Until next time, Go Play!

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Greg Lee

Hi, my name is Greg Lee. I'm the creator of the Color Score Professional/Visual Chord Learning System. I love to share ideas and concepts about piano and keyboard playing in all styles of music. I believe the key to learning is having fun and making complicated things simple with visual tools and illustrations.

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