A69 guitar chord
The root left to the bass player. Frees a finger for a tension.
- Tap a note to hear it
- Arrows change position
- Fingers, notes or intervals
- Play the chord
About A69 — rootless voicings
A69 is A, C#, E, F# and B — A6 with the ninth added as well.
It sounds wide and entirely at rest. The modern way to voice a tonic when a triad is too bare and a maj7 too pointed.
A69 notes and formula
| A | C# | E | F# | B |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 | 5 | 6 | 9 |
Tonic — it commits to nothing.
Also written A6/9, A6add9 or A six nine. The same chord either way; which spelling you meet depends on who wrote the chart.
How to play A69
Leave the root to the bass player. In a band nobody misses it, and the ear supplies it from the guide tones anyway.
The finger it frees goes to a tension, which is why these sound richer than the shape they came from rather than thinner.
A69 has 12 of them, on the top four strings, the middle four strings and strings 5-3-2-1, from the 2nd fret up to the 11th — every inversion the chord has: C# in the bass, E in the bass, F# in the bass and B in the bass. The one to learn first is the E shape at the 2nd fret, which is the easiest grip here.
4 of them sit on the top four strings, so you can run the inversions up one set without changing strings — which is the whole reason to learn them as a family rather than as separate grips.
Start with x04422 — no barre and 1 open string. 1 of the 8 shapes here sits in open position. 6 of the 8 need a barre. Together they cover the neck from the 2nd fret to the 12th.
| Frets | Where | Bass | Top | Hand |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| x22222 | 2nd fret | B, 9th in the bass | F# | barred |
| x04422 | open position | A, root position | F# | 1 open string |
| 544455 | 4th fret | A, root position | A | barred |
| xx7677 | 6th fret | A, root position | B | barred |
| x77677 | 6th fret | E, 2nd inversion | B | barred |
| x-9-9-9-10-9 | 9th fret | F#, 6th in the bass | C# | barred |
| x-12-9-11-10-9 | 9th fret | A, root position | C# | all fretted |
| x-12-11-11-12-12 | 11th fret | A, root position | E | barred |
The same notes rebuilt from scratch give 3 shell, 12 drop 2, 9 drop 3 and 6 open string voicings, each on its own page.
Tensions. A shell of A69, root, third and seventh, leaves a string free, and the tones that belong over it are the #11 (D#).
How to use A69
How you get to it. The turn that lands on A69 is Bm7 to E7 — the ii and the V of A — and E7 shares its third and seventh with Bm7, so the hand barely moves between them.
In which keys. Every note of A69 belongs to C# minor (the ♭VI), D major (the V), E major (the IV), F# minor (the ♭III), A major (the I) and B minor (the ♭VII).
What to play over A69
A69 is every note of the A major pentatonic, and nothing else. It also sits inside A major, A lydian, A mixolydian and A lydian dominant.
Chords near A69
Change one note of A69 and you have Amaj9 (the sixth becomes a major seventh), Amaj13 (add the major seventh), Am69 (the major third becomes a minor third), Aadd9 (drop the sixth), A6 (drop the ninth) or A9 (the sixth becomes a flat seventh).
A69 is a major chord — root, major third, fifth. Major chords on every root.
On A69’s sound and use this page follows Mark Levine, The Jazz Piano Book (Sher Music, 1989). The shapes and the derived voicings come from different places, and both are explained in where the chords and the theory come from.