Ab9b5 guitar chord
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About Ab9b5 — inversions voicings
Ab9b5 is Ab, C, D, Gb and Bb — with the natural ninth added over it.
It sounds sleek and tense. Played as a tritone substitution the ♭5 is the root of the dominant it replaced.
Altered dominant — commonly the tritone substitute.
Also written Ab9(b5), Ab9-5 or Ab9♭5.
What an inversion is
How to use Ab9b5
Ab9b5 is a dominant with its tension raised, so it still points at — harder than a plain seventh does. A plain dominant has two voices a semitone from home; an altered one has four, because every altered tone is also sitting a semitone from a note of Db. More voices leaning the same way is all "more tension" means here.
What to play over Ab9b5
Every note of Ab9b5 is in Ab whole tone and Ab lydian dominant.
Each of those is a page: the scale across the neck, and the chords it harmonises into — which is where Ab9b5 sits in it. Every scale.
Chords near Ab9b5
Change one note of Ab9b5 and you have (drop the ninth), (the flat fifth becomes the fifth), (the flat fifth becomes the sharp fifth) or (add the fifth).
Ab9b5 is an altered chord — a dominant seventh with its fifth or ninth moved. Altered dominant 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.