name that chord : the open guitar strings

People often wonder (and ask me, and I used to ponder) whether strumming the open guitar strings produces a chord. The short answer is yes: really, any conglomeration of tones is a chord. But since words are highly equivocal the question is usually meant as does strumming the open guitar strings produce a familiar triadic chord? The answer is still yes (more or less).

Before ever analyzing a chord and attempting to name it we should keep in mind that context has everything to do with how a chord is named (because chords may have harmonic functions, such as in the famed II-V-I progression). Consider this analogy: what does LIVE mean? You really can't answer the question (unless you want to give every possible answer) until you see/hear the word in a sentence.

She really knows how to live.
I went to a live concert last night.

In the first sentence we have a verb (a complimentary infinitive as a matter of fact); in the second an adjective.

So we must keep this in mind when wondering about what a given harmonic structure might be named.

So here's the chord in question, the open strings of the guitar...

(By the way, if you're unfamiliar with guitar notation these pitches sound an octave lower than written -- just like a tenor clef. I say this because you don't want to try to tune a guitar to these actual pitches unless you'd like to break your strings.)

There are 2 easy ways to analyze this chord completely out of context.

If it occurred in a tonal harmonic situation we could call it an E minor 7 add 11. We have all the notes of an E minor 7th: e, g, b, d as well as an a which is either the 4th or the 11th. Since 4s are usually sus let's just call this an add 11 -- that is we're viewing it as an extension of the triad. If there were an f# in the chord -- the 9th -- it would simply be an Eminor11. Another reason that this chord is e-ish is because there are 2 es. Nevertheless we don't have a context, and it isn't completely out of the question that the chord is not a G major (g, b, d) with an added 6 and 9 (e and a respectively) over an e.

But this chord is also even easier to analyze if we consider it as a quartal chord -- i.e. a chord built out of the interval of a perfect fourth (as opposed to thirds). In this case the lowest note (e, also the highest tone in the structure) is not the root. If we re-arrange the tones (and delete any repeats -- this is an abstraction for analysis) we can order them as: b, e, a, d, g -- five tones all a perfect 4th away from one another. When this chord shows up in the beginning of (say) Ginastera's Guitar Sonata it's probably best to assume that it's quartal and not triadic -- although other possibilities abound

Lastly (for our purposes) this could be part of a set of tones, for instance it could be a structure in a 12-tone piece (though with a duplication of a pitch class). In any situation like this it wouldn't get a name at all: it would simply be described numerically, such as (from low to high):
4 9 2 7 11 4. (This really depends upon what the reference pitch is: I've made C = 0 here, but it wouldn't have to be at all).

No matter what you call or how you describe it the chord sounds good...use it!