E Major 9th Chord: Notes, Voicings, and How to Play It

Write an Emaj9 where a band expects an E7 and the key moves underneath them. E7 carries a D natural, the fourth degree of A major. Emaj9 carries D♯, and A major has no D♯ in it anywhere. Both chords are built on E and both sound comfortable on their own, but one belongs to the key of A and the other one quietly leaves it. Emaj9 is not a richer E7. It is a change of address.

The five notes are E, G♯, B, D♯ and F♯. Three of them sit on black keys and two on white, which is an odd split for a chord that sounds this settled, and it is the reason a pianist’s hand ends up further into the keyboard than the notes suggest. A guitarist has the opposite experience: all five are available inside the first two frets, and the open form uses every string.

Try It: Emaj9 in the Chord Finder

Set the root to E and the scale to Major, then switch the Ninth row on and watch the first degree. Change the scale to Lydian afterwards and the tonic chord does not move at all: the same five notes, a different set of neighbours.

The Notes of Emaj9

Emaj9 is Emaj7 with a major 9th on top:

E, G♯, B, D♯ and F♯

Every accidental here is a sharp that E major’s key signature already carries. E major has four, F♯, C♯, G♯ and D♯, and this chord uses three. It leaves out C♯, the sixth degree, and A, the fourth, which is the note that would have sat a semitone above the G♯. Read the other way round, Emaj9 is the E major scale with its fourth and sixth removed.

How Emaj9 Is Built

Take Emaj7, which is E, G♯, B and D♯, and add F♯ a whole step above the root, sounded an octave or two higher so that it reads as a ninth rather than a second. Nothing has to be dropped at this size, which stops being true further up the stack; the extended chords guide covers what goes missing and why.

Three near neighbours are worth holding on to. Lower the D♯ by a semitone and Emaj9 becomes E9, a dominant with somewhere to be. Take the D♯ out entirely and it becomes Eadd9, the same ninth over a plain triad. Take the root out instead and the four notes left over, G♯, B, D♯ and F♯, spell G♯m7 in their own right. Memorise that third one: most of the good voicings on both instruments are found through it.

Emaj9 on the Piano

Root position runs from E up to the F♯ a major ninth above, fourteen semitones, which is at the edge of what most hands will hold, and the geography makes it harder still. The bottom note is a white key at the front of the keyboard and the top note is a black key set back behind it, so the little finger travels diagonally as well as sideways. The same ninth measured from C to D, two white keys in a line, is a noticeably easier grab.

The compensation arrives the moment you drop the fifth. Take B out and everything above the root is G♯, D♯ and F♯: three black keys and nothing else. Give the root to the left hand and the right hand never touches a white key, so it can find the chord by feel and shift octaves without recalculating anything.

Right hand, ninth on top: G♯, D♯ and F♯ with fingers 1, 3 and 5. The chord reads at its most open and the F♯ is the note anybody hears.

Right hand, third on top: D♯, F♯ and G♯ with fingers 1, 2 and 3. F♯ and G♯ are neighbouring black keys, so the second and third fingers sit side by side, and the major seventh at the bottom makes the chord sound surer of itself.

Left hand: E on its own, or E with the B a fifth above it when nothing else is covering the bass.

Do not double the D♯. One major seventh inside the chord is the colour. Two of them an octave apart start to sound like a melody note that has wandered in.

Emaj9 on the Guitar

The open form is 0 2 1 1 0 2, sounding E, B, D♯, G♯, B and F♯ from the sixth string up. All five notes, one doubled fifth, nothing above the 2nd fret.

It is fiddlier than the grid looks, and the trouble is in the middle of the hand rather than at either end. The index finger has to lie flat across the fourth and third strings at the 1st fret to cover D♯ and G♯, and then stop dead. The second string beneath it has to ring open, because that open B is the chord’s fifth. Let the finger creep one string too far and the second string sounds C at the 1st fret, a note E major does not contain, a semitone above the B it has just smothered. The chord does not go slightly wrong. It stops being this chord.

The rest is easy: middle finger on the fifth string at the 2nd fret, little finger on the first string at the 2nd fret for the F♯, sixth string open for the root.

Two grips are worth knowing further up the neck. x 7 6 8 7 x puts the root on the fifth string at the 7th fret and omits the fifth: E, G♯, D♯ and F♯, one finger per string and no barre. Restore the fifth on top with x 7 6 8 7 7, which asks the ring finger to flatten across the top two strings while the little finger reaches to the 8th fret. x x 6 4 4 2 is the G♯m7 identity on its own: play it over a bass note E and Emaj9 is what the room hears.

Inversions

Near the nut a guitar hands over two of these. Root position is the open form. Move the sixth string to the 2nd fret and let the first string go, and 2 2 1 1 0 0 gives F♯ in the bass. Everything with D♯ or B underneath it belongs to a bass player or to a left hand, and the guide to chord inversions and voice leading covers which one to reach for.

Voicings

• Open form, 0 2 1 1 0 2, all five notes, the sixth and second strings ringing.
• One note per degree, 0 x 1 1 0 2, fifth string muted, no doublings anywhere.
• Rootless, x x 6 4 4 2, which is G♯m7, played over an E in the bass.
• No fifth, movable, x 7 6 8 7 x, four fingers, four strings, root on the fifth string.
• Piano split, E and B in the left hand, G♯, D♯ and F♯ above middle C in the right.

Keep the D♯ audible. In the open shape it lives on the fourth string with a ringing E on either side, exactly where an inner voice disappears, and an Emaj9 whose major seventh cannot be heard is an Eadd9 with extra effort.

Which Keys Contain Emaj9

• degree 1 (I) of E major
• degree 1 (I) of E lydian
• degree 4 (IV) of B major
• degree 5 (V) of A lydian
• degree 3 (III) of C♯ natural minor
• degree 6 (VI) of G♯ natural minor

The first two are the same chord in two different keys, and the chord itself will not tell you which. E major and E Lydian differ only at the fourth degree, A against A♯, and Emaj9 leaves the fourth out.

C♯ natural minor is on the list and C♯ harmonic minor is not, which is worth a moment. Raising that key’s seventh degree to B♯ for a proper dominant removes the very note that is Emaj9’s fifth, so the chord belongs to the stretches of C♯ minor that stay natural and not to its cadences. A Lydian is the same argument from the other side: Emaj9 is the fifth degree of A Lydian and not of A major, because the D♯ inside it is the sharpened fourth that separates the two.

Where Emaj9 Shows Up

As the IV of B major. Imaj9, IVmaj9, ii9, V9: Bmaj9, Emaj9, C♯m9, F♯9. Gospel and R&B keyboard writing lives in keys like this, and the first move is the cheapest of the four. Bmaj9 and Emaj9 share B, D♯ and F♯, so three of the five notes stay exactly where they are and two fingers do all the travelling. The same pair of chords costs a guitarist a whole change of hand position, which is one reason the progression sounds like a keyboard idea even when a guitar is playing it.

As the VI of G♯ minor. i7, VI9, iv7, VII: G♯m7, Emaj9, C♯m7, F♯. The first two chords share all four of their upper notes, so without a bass instrument nobody can tell them apart: what makes the second one a different chord is an E underneath it and nothing else. That is useful and dangerous in equal measure. Useful, because a vocal line can hold G♯ straight through the change, the tonic in one bar and the major third in the next, and never sound as though it moved. Dangerous, because an unaccompanied guitarist will find the first half of the progression collapsing into one chord.

As the fifth degree that is not a dominant. Put Emaj9 where the key of A expects E7 and A stops behaving like a major key. Ambient and electronic writing does this deliberately: Amaj7 to Emaj9 and back, looped, with no cadence anywhere, because a chord whose seventh has been raised to D♯ has nothing left to pull with. Play A, E7, A alongside it and the contrast is immediate. One pair goes somewhere; the other hovers.

The limit is that Emaj9 contains no tritone at all, so it will not move a progression along by itself. One bar of it after a bar of B7 sounds like an arrival, and four bars in a row sound like nothing is happening, so give it a bass line or a melody to work against.

Related Chords

• E Major 7th Chord: Notes, Voicings, and How to Play It is the four note chord this one is built on, and the same open shape with the top string left as it comes.
• E Add9 Chord: Notes, Voicings, and How to Play It keeps the F♯ and loses the D♯, which removes the only semitone Emaj9 contains.
• E Dominant 9th Chord: Notes, Voicings, and How to Play It lowers that D♯ to D and turns the chord into a dominant.
• A♭ Minor 7th Chord: Notes, Voicings, and How to Play It is the top four notes read from their own root: A♭, C♭, E♭ and G♭ are the same pitches as G♯, B, D♯ and F♯.
• E Major Chord: Notes, Voicings, and How to Play It is the triad underneath all of it.

Learn More

• Extended Chords: Which Tensions Work, and How to Voice Them covers which notes get dropped and how rootless voicings work.
• Seventh Chords: A Complete Guide to maj7, min7, dom7, and More covers the maj7 chord underneath this one.
• Chord Inversions and Voice Leading explains the held notes in the B major progression above.
• E Lydian Scale: Notes, Chords, and How to Play It shares this tonic chord with E major and differs only in a note the chord does not contain.