Ab69 guitar chord
Playable, correctly spelled, and not how the chord is normally voiced. Right now this is the shapes that put a ninth, eleventh or thirteenth below the root.
- Tap a note to hear it
- Arrows change position
- Fingers, notes or intervals
- Play the chord
About Ab69 — uncommon voicings
Ab69 is Ab, C, Eb, F and Bb — Ab6 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.
Tonic — it commits to nothing.
Ab69 notes and formula
| Ab | C | Eb | F | Bb |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 | 5 | 6 | 9 |
Also written Ab6/9, Ab6add9 or Ab six nine. The same chord either way; which spelling you meet depends on who wrote the chart.
How to play Ab69
Five notes and four fingers, so something has to go. Keep C (it fixes the quality) and F and Bb (what the symbol is about). Let Eb and Ab go, in that order — a perfect fifth says nothing the root has not, and in a band the bass has the root.
Play Ab69 as a shell — root, third and seventh — and the spare string takes the #11 (D).
All 7 common shapes as fret numbers, lowest string first. Hover or tap one to see it drawn.
- x11111, 1st fret, Bb, 9th in the bass, top note F, barred
- 433344, 3rd fret, Ab, root position, top note Ab, barred
- xx6566, 5th fret, Ab, root position, top note Bb, barred
- x66566, 5th fret, Eb, 2nd inversion, top note Bb, barred
- x88898, 8th fret, F, 6th in the bass, top note C, barred
- x-11-8-10-9-8, 8th fret, Ab, root position, top note C, all fretted
- x-11-10-10-11-11, 10th fret, Ab, root position, top note Eb, barred
How to use Ab69
How you get to it. The turn that lands on Ab69 is Bbm7 to Eb7 — the ii and the V of Ab — and Eb7 shares its third and seventh with Bbm7, so the hand barely moves between them.
In which keys. Every note of Ab69 belongs to C minor (the ♭VI), C# major (the V), Eb major (the IV), F minor (the ♭III), Ab major (the I) and Bb minor (the ♭VII).
What to play over Ab69
Ab69 is every note of the Ab major pentatonic, and nothing else. It also sits inside Ab major, Ab mixolydian, Ab lydian and Ab lydian dominant.
Each of those is a page: the scale across the neck, and the chords it harmonises into — which is where Ab69 sits in it. Every scale.
Chords near Ab69
Change one note of Ab69 and you have Abmaj9 (the sixth becomes the major seventh), Abmaj13 (add the major seventh), Abm69 (the major third becomes the minor third), Abadd9 (drop the sixth), Ab6 (drop the ninth) or Ab9 (the sixth becomes the flat seventh).
Ab69 is a major chord — root, major third, fifth. Major chords on every root.
The common shapes and the derived voicings come from different places, and both are explained in how this site is built.