Sixth Chords
Sixth chords are often used in music to add a feeling of hope and to make it feel richer and more engaging. Learn how to use sixth chords to enrich your own playing.
Last updated on 10 June 2024
Note: You'll gain the most from this article if you have a basic knowledge of major and minor chords, pop chord progressions and chord inversions. You can find guides to all of these in our chords library. Sixth chords add nuance and complexity to music, making it more engaging for listeners. They also infuse music with a feeling of hope. In this article, we introduce the sixth note and show how it's used to build sixth chords. We then cover how sixth chords sound and the types of songs they appear in, before ending with some tips on next steps.
How do you build a sixth chord?
A sixth chord is a major triad with the sixth note of the scale added. This is why you may also see it referred to as an "added sixth chord."So what is the sixth note? There are seven notes in any scale, named for their position relative to the root note. We'll use a C major scale as an example:When building a sixth chord, we're interested in the sixth note of the scale: 4.5 steps above the root note, a whole step above the fifth.
How do you play sixth chords on piano?
For a major sixth chord, the starting point is a major triad. As always, it's made up of the root note, the major third and the fifth. Here's a C major triad:To make it into a major sixth chord, you simply add the sixth note — in this case, it would be A (see the video below for a visual).
