Great sound. Walter Becker said that he thought of it as a major add 2 (&/or add 9 I guess - main thing is to keep the 3rd in the chord).

I've always thought of this as a m7#5.

Fantastic lesson

Mu chords are fav. Great topic and great lesson

One of my favorite Chords

Thank you for sharing, Andy. I’ve used the first inversion b4 but now will be trying to incorporate the MU chord using your suggested tips. Beautiful playing by the way. Thx again !

Excellent tutorial ,as usual. Thanks!

these seem to be just inversions, not “MU” Chords, MU chords are spelled out 1-2-3-5.

Cool lesson, Andy...👏👏👏👏

I don't see it. According to Donald Fagen the 2 and the 3 must maintain the whole tone dissonance for it yo be a MU chord. Otherwise, as pretty as it sounds, it is simply an inversion of an Add9 chord. The MU chord needs the rub.

Great lesson, great ideas for using this chord, which I usually only use when playing Steely Dan songs like Deacon Blues or Peg!

Thank you!!!

ANDY, make a lesson about how hendrix used 6/9 chords and slash chords mostly used on songs on the Axis Bold as Love Album. He would use his thumb to play the slash bass note

muuuuuuuuuu

Great teacher

Show

What year and model is this Guitar place? Really like it.

FWIW, I seem to recall in another Steely Dan discussion that what Walter and Donald labeled the “MU” major chord, was a four note cluster of: R-2-3-5. Think Rikki Don’t Lose That Number. (even though it was Michael O’Martian who played the actual piano part) Not arguing, just raising a point.

Another great video, and you sound amazing as always, but there is one important thing that you are missing: what the "mu chord" really is and where it came from. First, it was an invention of Fagen and Becker called the "μ major chord", so they used the Greek letter, but they pronounced it "moo major", like you (I thought it was "myoo", like the Greek letter, so thanks for setting me straight). They introduced it to the public in the Steely Dan Song Book that came out after Aja. The definitive info is from their own words which can be found by going to the Steely Dan entry of Wikipedia in the section "Composition and chord use" and following the reference links (currently #83 and #84). The first shows the text of the introduction to the Steely Dan Song Book, and the second is an interview with Walter Becker. They say that the mu major chord has notes 1-2-3-5, or some inversion, *but* "Inversions of the µ major may be formed in the usual manner with one caveat: the voicing of the second and third scale tones, which is the essence oaf the chord's appeal, should always occur as a whole tone dissonance." That means that your 3-2-5-1 voicing (a drop-3 of the 2-3-5-1 first inversion mu major chord) is not itself quite officially mu major, but it has still come to be called "the Steely Dan chord" in some circles according to Walter Becker in the interview: --- Q. Are there other chords [other than mu major] you can name that defined the Steely Dan sound? W.B. The particular chord that people have mentioned to me is a chord where you have, in the key of C, an E in the bass, a D, a G and a C on top. Let me pick up my guitar for a second... (picks up electric guitar and plays chord). It's an extension of the "Mu chord" if you will but you move the third, the E; into the bass. So it's a C major chord with an E in the bass. (As well as the major second.) I've been told that in some circles this is known as the "Steely Dan chord." I don't know if that's true... It's a chord we used over and over and now it's become kind of a generic fusion cliche harmony. There's a lot more sophisticated harmonic stuff going on now than there used to be so a lot of this stuff is in the public domain. --- So that "other chord" is the one you are calling mu major. This is a bit of a fine point, but they didn't call the 3-2-5-1 "mu major" even though it is an inversion of mu major and it helped define their sound. "Mu major" "was kind of a joke, that name", according to Becker. It's obviously just a major add-2 chord, but they defined the "mu major" to be a touch more specific: the whole tone dissonance of the 2-3 had to be there. So putting the one 3rd into the bass means it isn't mu major.

Hey Andy, 🙂 It could be my eyes but visually I thought I was looking at, say in the case if that first 'F' example, basically an A minor 9th. Apologies if I've mistaken it. Also, fun fact: Re Steely Dan. When I was on world tour some years ago, Rick Derringer came to see a show. He had just come off Ringo's tour (and did something with McCartney too). Hr walked up to me and shook my hand, complimented my work and introduced his wife. So the three if us hung out the next day. Was one of the highlights of my career. I could go on an on. 🙄 😆

MU ? ha ha ha ha ha ha