There’s a secret ingredient that all the coolest chords have.

My ears had figured that out a long time ago, but it was only relatively recently that it mentally clicked with me. That secret ingredient is called dissonance, and it’s something that beautiful sounds often (but not always!) rely on.

Dissonance, for those not familiar with the term, means “a tension or clash resulting from the combination of two disharmonious or unsuitable elements.” Musically, that would mean adding some notes that don’t harmonize nicely.

We’ll play some dissonant note pairs shortly, and you’ll hear it for yourself! :) Rather than just tell you all about it, we’ll check out some examples and how you can explore it on your own too.

Ready? Let’s get started!

Dissonant Chords on Guitar

Notes that are a semitone or tone away from each other (or the octave) are usually notes that create the kind of dissonance that becomes pleasing in chords.

Let’s start by exploring the sound of a semitone (Minor 2nd), so you can hear the clash! A great easy starter is to play the Note C on Fret 1 of String 2 (with Finger 1) and the note B on Fret 4 of String 3 with Finger 4).

Play them together. Most people would agree that it sounds pretty ‘wrong’ or “out” and can’t imagine it would sound nice in a chord.

Now, we’ll try adding a semitone interval (the most dissonant interval) into a minor chord. But we can’t just start adding random notes to our chords – they should come from a scale related to the chord.

💡 You can add in random notes if you are a real explorer, and you might find some gems. Still, it’s a much more haphazard approach and unlikely to bring usable and cool-sounding chords as quickly!

There is only one semitone option near a chord tone in the Dorian Mode, arguably the most useful minor scale. You’ll find it between the 2 and b3 scale degrees - the notes B and C in an A Dorian Mode: A B C D E F# G. The other semitone is between the 6th and 7th degrees. That one is also fun to explore, but it’s harder to make it sound cool.

By some strange coincidence, the notes B and C that we explored earlier are the same ones we now want to get into an A Minor Chord. So how should we do it? There are a bunch of fun options here to explore! Try those:

First, we could try just adding that note to a regular Amin chord. Technically, that could have a few names! I’d likely call it Amin Add2, but more commonly, I see it called Amin9 (which the name implies the inclusion of the b7, which this chord doesn’t have!).
Then, you can also swap places of the C and B notes and play the B on the open string, which sounds fantastic.

Explore It!

If you’re a more advanced guitar player, you should now go through and play all the Amin shapes you know! Explore where you can add a B note – don’t be worried about calling it a 2 or a 9. It’s the same in this context.

The Amin Chord is fun to explore because of the open B string, which you can easily pop into many chords. But don’t forget to explore closed chords (no open strings!) as well.

Another grip to explore is adding the G note, making it a proper “Minor 9” chord. For that, you’ll want the notes A, C, E, G, and B like this super lush chord grip that, while being a tricky one to jump to, sounds amazing! Here it is:

If you’re lucky and have long and flexible fingers, I have one more grip for you! :) This one has the semitone clash between the minor 3rd and the 9th, but also a tone clash between the b7 and the root. Ouch. But sounds great!

This one has a whole lot of dissonance going on, but I love it, and I just opened another can of worms for you… the dissonance of tones… more on that in another article. :)

Hope you enjoy this adventure in dissonance land. If you want to dig more, check out these 12 Painfully Beautiful Guitar Chords. Happy trails!