Minor Add 11

Notes and formula

The formula is 1 – ♭3 – 5 – 11, or 0 – 3 – 7 – 17 in semitones. A minor triad with the fourth degree added an octave up.

The distance from E♭ to F is a whole tone, which is a consonance in this context, so the chord tolerates any voicing. That is a real difference from the major add11, where placement decides whether the chord is usable.

How to play it

On guitar the shape is x–3–1–0–x–1, sounding C–E♭–G–F. The open third string supplies the fifth and the top string the eleventh.

On piano the chord works in close position — C–E♭–F–G is perfectly clear — which is unusual for a four-note chord with an added degree.

How it sounds

Open and modal. The added fourth removes some of the minor triad's definiteness without making it ambiguous, and the result sits somewhere between a minor chord and a suspension.

Held long it reads as atmosphere; struck within a progression it reads as a passing colour on the way to a plain minor chord.

Where you hear it

In folk and Celtic guitar, where drone strings supply the fourth. In film scoring, as a minor chord that has not committed to a mood.

It also arises constantly in open tunings and in fingerstyle arrangements without being named, for the same reason as its major relative: the interval falls under the hand.

Against minor eleventh

Cm11 has six notes: the triad, a flattened seventh, a ninth and the eleventh. Cmadd11 has four and no seventh.

The seventh is the difference between a jazz chord and a folk one. Both are smooth — the minor third is what makes the eleventh safe in each — but the smaller chord stays outside the jazz idiom.

Scales that contain it

Dorian, Aeolian and Phrygian all fit, since the chord says nothing about the second, the sixth or the seventh degree.

That is unusually permissive, and it is the practical reason the chord appears in modal writing: it constrains a melody less than almost any other minor sonority.

Frequently asked questions