# What chord is this? B F# C#



## hobofromhell (Feb 18, 2011)

My first impression was a diminished chord, but I'm just starting out with this chord construction thing. Any help?


----------



## hobofromhell (Feb 18, 2011)

Well I've concluded it is 1 5 9 of the B minor scale, or at least I think it is. Correct me if I'm wrong. Does that make it an add9?


----------



## haffner1 (Feb 18, 2011)

sus2 I think


----------



## hobofromhell (Feb 18, 2011)

Well would the 9 be considered a 2? It isn't the next tone in the scale it's an octave higher than the 2nd tone so isn't it a 9? Thanks for the response.


----------



## AnnihilateThis (Feb 18, 2011)

F# sus4 or B sus2


----------



## ixlramp (Feb 18, 2011)

B F# C# ascending in pitch from a B root? B suspended 2nd chord, with the 2nd up an octave.


----------



## Mr. Big Noodles (Feb 18, 2011)

I think I've seen this question here before a couple of times. The answer is that it all depends on context. Assuming that these notes are in ascending order, with the root in the bass, here are the possible classifications:

B F# C# - A quintal voicing on B (See here: Quartal and quintal harmony - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). It's also completely possible that you are hearing a D or D# in there, whether real or implied, which would make it an add9 chord of some sort.

B C# F# - Bsus2

C# F# B (Or C# B F#) - C#7sus4, a quartal chord.

F# B C# - F#sus4

Or you could have any one of those notes be a non-harmonic tone. In Western music, the main harmonic building block is the third. As soon as you start messing with that unit, then you need more to go off of before deciding definitively what the "chord" is.


----------



## darren (Feb 18, 2011)

That's also known as the "stacked fifths" or "Andy Summers" chord.


----------



## All_¥our_Bass (Feb 18, 2011)

Is this actually in a piece of music you are making/writing if so, try and show us what comes before and after this chord.

My first guess is a Bsus2 or B5 add9,

but it depends on the voicing (order of notes low to high) as well as what this chord precedes and follows-since all of these thing can change what we think of as the root, even if the chord alone suggests/implies a different root. Context is much more important than many people give it credit for.


----------



## All_¥our_Bass (Feb 18, 2011)

DELETED DOUBLEPOST


----------



## timbaline (Feb 18, 2011)

Depends on context, personally I call stacked fifths an add9 chord. I also call it the prog-metal chord (Scale the Summit, Cynic, AAL etc. use this chord A LOT).


----------



## hobofromhell (Feb 19, 2011)

There is no real context. I was just making random chord shapes and trying to name them so I could get better at the chord constuction (or identification in this case). Nice to see I was at least in the right ball park. Thanks for the help everyone.


----------



## ixlramp (Feb 19, 2011)

darren said:


> That's also known as the "stacked fifths" or "Andy Summers" chord.



Yeah! stacked fifths! 

This is the chord that encouraged me to switch to fifths tuning. I played 3 strings across one fret ... gorgeous.


----------



## bostjan (Feb 19, 2011)

B5 add 9. Most common chord in songs by the Police or Incubus. The song "Bound to the Floor" by Local H is built around the 5 add 9 chord.


----------



## StratoJazz (Feb 20, 2011)

sus 2. Lowered third. It'd normally be:

B D F#

B minor


----------



## Mr. Big Noodles (Feb 20, 2011)

StratoJazz said:


> sus 2. Lowered third. It'd normally be:
> 
> B D F#
> 
> B minor



Doesn't have to be a minor chord. Sus chords can easily replace either a major or minor sonority.


----------



## SirMyghin (Feb 21, 2011)

I would be tempted to look at this as a B sus2 if played in the straight forward sense, opposed to something like a B9 (no 3 no 7) or B5 add 9 simple due to how it plays against stuff like the 3rd. I think playing it against the major or minor 3rd sounds like poop. So I look at it as a chord where the 3rd has been alterred. Adding a major 3rd directly to the chord though, a much more pleasant story in my experience.


----------



## Mr. Big Noodles (Feb 21, 2011)

Thing is, this really does depend on context. And here's why: without relative harmony, there is no telling what you will do with this chord, and what will sound good. That particular voicing is one that kind of exists in a couple of different realms. This is where harmony stood at the end of the Renaissance:







And this is what we got, coming out of the 1600's, and developed through the 1800's:






Around the middle to end of the nineteenth century, non-chord tones began taking on more important roles in Western music, and by the early twentieth century, this was pretty much the available diatonic vocabulary:






There was also a movement to find alternatives to the traditional tertian harmony by vertically reorganizing the tones of the diatonic scale, and all the diatonic interval stacks were tested:
















Obviously, these are really generalized, and you will rarely see seven fifths stacked on top of each other. You might see bits of that formula, though. Looking at this B F# C# thing, we would probably conclude that it belongs to the family of quintal harmonies. However, as we're only going up to the ninth, and since the tertian tonal system is still strong, it is easy to class our figure along with the the tertian sonorities, provided that you're willing to live with implied thirds and sevenths and whatnot. Whether it has a quintal character or is simply a color to spice up a normal diatonic triad relies purely on the musical context.


----------



## haffner1 (Feb 22, 2011)

Wow. Overanalyze much?


----------



## Mr. Big Noodles (Feb 22, 2011)

Nope. There's not much to analyze in the first place, since we're dealing with a single voicing removed from any sort of context, so we have to invent the context in order to be able to comment on its nature. The chord itself is made by stacking fifths - this much is obvious. However, ninth chords and chords with added ninths are used fairly often in rock music, and rock music and its descendants also have a habit of omitting the third of the chord (power chords), so this could easily, easily be B5add9, instead of a quintal chord on B. In terms of the notes, there is no difference. In terms of texture, though, it makes all the difference in the world. As hobofromhell has no music that he is relating this chord to, I am providing two possible situations: the music is quintally-based, and the chord is perceived as belonging to those voicings, or the music is tertian, and the chord fits in as a color, and possibly has something to do with non-chord tones (which we cannot know without context, which is the magic word).


----------



## SirMyghin (Feb 22, 2011)

SchecterWhore said:


> Thing is, this really does depend on context. And here's why: without relative harmony, there is no telling what you will do with this chord, and what will sound good. That particular voicing is one that kind of exists in a couple of different realms.




Yeah I know, overgeneralizing me berated by music theory dude . I am working with a few of these recently and trying to imply a third is not working in the context I have, major or minor, hence my sentiment of the now.


----------



## Mr. Big Noodles (Feb 22, 2011)

SirMyghin said:


> Yeah I know, overgeneralizing me berated by music theory dude . I am working with a few of these recently and trying to imply a third is not working in the context I have, major or minor, hence my sentiment of the now.



Sorry, dude, didn't mean it like that.  Saying that it doesn't work with a third is generalizing it a bit (I didn't know that you were talking about it in context of something you had written), and I was trying to make a case for both the inclusion and exclusion of the third in the chord.


----------



## All_¥our_Bass (Mar 3, 2011)

Is the C#...

...directly above the B...

```
E|-
B|-
G|-
D|-
A|-9--(F#)
E|-9--(C#)
B|-12-(B)
```

...or is it directly above the F#?

```
E|-
B|-
G|-
D|-
A|-16-(C#)
E|-14-(F#)
B|-12-(B)
```

Outside of any context, I'm inclined to label B C# F# as "Bsus2"-as B and C# are a second apart, and B F# C# as "B5add9"-as B and C# are a ninth apart


----------

