Truman,

The old "Purple Haze" chord is an E seven augmented nine. Your name is fairly correct.

As far as the missing B goes, lot of larger chords leave out notes (especially on the guitar), If you're going to leave one out, the fifth is a decent choice. The root is fairly important, the third makes it major or minor, the seventh helps define it as being in the key of the root, and the sharp nine is the "money" note.

Just for fun, try playing it in a different inversion...like put the sharp nine lower and put the third up above the seventh. The whole character of the chord changes, same notes, different order.

I've heard the brain can only track five things at one time, tops, so we tend to group larger numbers of things. We hear extended chords as two different chords played at the same time. We hear this chord kind of like an E major chord on the bottom with a G drone chord on the top. (notice both the E and G chords normally have B's in them, the note we can leave out...it's implied from two directions.)

Great chord, the E7+9 (E seven augmented nine) Try it with the B, it sounds nice and thick.

You've got to know your limitations. I don't know what your limitations are. I found out what mine were when I was twelve. I found out that there weren't too many limitations, if I did it my way. -Johnny Cash

It's only music.
-niteshift

Mike Dunbar Music