Added-Tone Chord
A triad plus a note outside its tertian stack
Related
An added-tone chord places a note directly on a triad without stacking it through a seventh. The commonest are add9 and add6: the ninth or sixth sits beside the third, bright and stable, with no seventh to push the harmony forward.
An added tone is not a suspension. A suspension displaces a chord tone and resolves back to it; an added tone coexists with the third and owes no resolution. Nor is it a ninth chord, which normally includes a seventh. Cadd9 and C9 differ by that one note, yet their tension differs.
Added-tone chords are common in pop, rock and folk, often as the tonic or as colour inside a loop. They are made to stay; if the progression must move, the bass or the next chord has to do the work.
Sources
- 加音和弦与七和弦的区别，参 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "Chord"；本文为原创表述
Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.