Chord of the day #2: D11

"Close voicings" are chords where all the notes are confined to a single octave. They are not easy to play on the guitar, for reasons I'll explain later. Here's one of my favorites, D11:

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You may wonder, where's the D in your D11 chord? I don't need one. This chord has the three necessary ingredients of a dominant 11 chord: the 11th (G) and two guide tones, the 3rd (F#) and ♭7th (C). The fourth note is optional, and you have one of three options: the root (D), the 5th (A), or the 9th (E). I've opted for the 9th, so from low to high, this voicing consists of a a 3rd, 11th, ♭7th, and 9th. It sounds better higher up on the neck, where the dissonance between the 3rd and 11th isn't as muddy.

A lot of guitar chord books will offer this modal voicing as a dominant 11 chord (here instantiated in G):

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I don't consider this a proper dominant 11th chord because it doesn't have a 3rd degree. It is therefore neither major nor minor, and doesn't quite follow the standard third-stacking framework of Western harmony. I would rather describe it as an F/G, F(add 9)/G, or A-7#5/G. You could also call it a G11(no 3rd).

Aside! The greatest guitar chord book ever written is Mel Bay's Complete Book of Harmony Theory and Voicing by Bret Wilmott. Buy it.