IF WE PRESUME you already know the root, 3rd and 5th notes are taken from the Major scale to form a Major triad, or chord (flatten the 3rd by a semitone for Minor chords) then it shouldn’t be too much of a leap to see how adding further notes from the scale into our chords gives us an extended chord, with names ranging from A6 to D7 (b9b13). Basically, these names describe what the notes are and whether one of the notes has been‘altered’ by raising or lowering it. Here are a few examples to get us started, and there will be more to come in future articles.