Hey Friend,
We finished up the last chord in the E major key study yesterday, so I thought we'd take a little side-step and look at a chord form that you don't hear about very often.
In fact, I had never heard it called this until I got the latest issue of Guitar Player magazine.
It's called a "Mu" (moo) major chord. Mu is a letter from the Greek alphabet (for those of you with inquiring minds).
It is essentially a major chord with the second note (or ninth note) from the scale the chord is constructed from. If I'm understanding correctly, you could write it out as an "add2" or "add9" chord. I'm not sure why that's called "Mu", but hey, I'm just a guy that loves his guitars...
Maybe it's just shorthand...
Think of it like this. You have an E major chord with notes E, G# and B, right? If you add the second interval (note) of the E major scale to this chord, you now have E(Mu). Refresher:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 E F# G# A B C# D#
Now your chord consists of E, F#, G# and B.
You can do this with virtually any major chord, and what you get is the same major tonality with extra color added.
Apparently, Steely Dan makes heavy use of these chord renderings in their writing. The example given in the article was "Ricky Don't Lose That Number", and I can definitely hear the Mu chords as I listen to the song. This is the progression:
D(Mu) A(Mu) E(Mu) C#(Mu) B(Mu)
These chords are a bit more advanced and require some finger stretches that beginners will have some difficulty with, but the sounds are phenomenal! I'll lay out these chords tomorrow so you can hear (and see) for yourselves.
I'll also keep an eye out for the article to come online (GP magazine hasn't posted it yet).
With that, gotta skate and get this day going so I can start the weekend! Rock it, peeps!
Peace~
Dave | 
