Originally Posted by: bcraig4J

Oh I should added I was using the keyboard to figure out these chords my bad 😲

yes those upper structures would be very hard to play on the guitar since I only have 6 strings thanks for that tip much appreciated 😀

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Got it. Yes, the piano keyboard layout makes playing these chords easier than playing them on guitar! Also playing close voiced harmony.

[quote=bcraig4J]

What I meant to say was

I would see the whole C Major 13 Chord in two parts

Like to have C Major 7 in the left hand

and to have D minor in the right hand

and when play together in this order it creates a C Major 13

So visually for me this make sense

Is that wrong sorry ?

[p]No need to be sorry. I understand you just trying to learn! I just wanted to make sure to set you on the right path while you are learning.

It's not necessarily wrong to think of it like that while you are learning to visualize it. But the thing is that it doesn't help conceptually in the long run.

For example, you could look at a C major 7 chord as the note C with an E minor triad on top: c-(e-g-b).

And that's true, but kind of misleading, because the whole point of calling it a C major 7 is that the note B is the 7th of the C major scale. The E minor triad happens to be in there, but it doesn't have anything to do with the chord from a conceptual, identifying perspective.

Now you could view it as an E minor chord with a C in the bass as a slash chord: Emin/C. But only if that was the original musical context. For example, a chord progression that started with a root position E minor chord and the chord stays stationary while the bass moves underneath.

E minor in the upper harmony

Bassline: e-d-c-b

So, you'd have: E minor - E minor/D, E minor/C, E minor/B

But the point here is that in this example you have a reason to call it an E minor triad with a C in the bass.

But that's a very specialized context. And the vast majority of the time you see a C major 7 chord, it's just a C major 7 chord. It doesn't help us label or think about the chord in any meaningful way to add the E minor triad. And it could potentially cause confusion. Why clutter up the elegance of "C major 7 is (1-3-5-7), (c-e-g-b) of a C major scale" with trying to squeeze in, "Oh, yeah, also there's an E minor triad in there, too"?

Make sense?

Same thing with the C major 13. It's a type of extended chord rooted on C (1-3-5-7-9-11-13), (c-e-g-b-d-f-a). That's more than enough to deal with without having to add more to it, that there's a D minor triad.

Hope that helps!