“A twist for the fingers as well as the brain”: Players like Steve Hackett are masters of extended chords/harmony – here’s how you can use them too

Steve Hackett plays a chord on his heavily modified Goldtop .

The world of extended chords can appear quite unfathomable at times. The apparently benign 11th chord is a great example of this, as it falls between the cracks of many chord-naming conventions, inhabiting a world of its own.

As you may know, extended chords go beyond the basic major or minor triad, adding the 7th (or b7th), 9th, 11th, and finally the 13th. In music theory books, this usually happens neatly in ascending scale order, and we hear increasingly beautiful, complex chords as we go.