Abalt 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 Abalt — rootless voicings
Abalt is Ab, C, E, Gb and A — Ab7 with every tension it can carry altered at once.
It sounds maximum tension, barely holding together. Not one chord but an instruction: take the root, third and flat seventh, add any two alterations, and let the rest go.
Abalt notes and formula
| Ab | C | E | Gb | A |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 | ♯5 | ♭7 | ♭9 |
Altered dominant — the hardest pull available.
Also written Ab7alt, Ab7altered or Ab altered dominant. The same chord either way; which spelling you meet depends on who wrote the chart.
How to play Abalt
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.
Abalt has 13 of them, on the top four strings, the middle four strings and strings 5-3-2-1, from open position up to the 13th — every inversion the chord has: C in the bass, E in the bass, Gb in the bass and Bbb in the bass. The one to learn first is the E shape at the nut, which is the easiest grip here.
5 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 xx6534 — low, at the 3rd fret. None of the shapes for Abalt uses an open string, so every one of them is movable; the lowest sits at the 3rd fret. None of them needs a barre. Together they cover the neck from the 3rd fret to the 13th.
| Frets | Where | Bass | Top | Hand |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 43x534 | 3rd fret | Ab, root position | Ab | all fretted |
| xx6534 | 3rd fret | Ab, root position | Ab | all fretted |
| 4565x4 | 4th fret | Ab, root position | Ab | all fretted |
| xx6798 | 6th fret | Ab, root position | C | all fretted |
| x-11-10-x-9-10 | 9th fret | Ab, root position | D | all fretted |
| x-11-10-13-13-10 | 10th fret | Ab, root position | D | all fretted |
| x-11-12-13-13-x | 11th fret | Ab, root position | C | all fretted |
The same notes rebuilt from scratch give 5 shell and 5 open string voicings, each on its own page.
Tensions. A shell of Abalt, root, third and seventh, leaves a string free, and the tones that belong over it are the #11 (D).
How to use Abalt
Abalt is a dominant with its tension raised, so it still points at Db — harder than a plain seventh does, because the altered tones sit a semitone from where they are going.
What to play over Abalt
Every note of Abalt is in Ab altered.
Chords near Abalt
Change one note of Abalt and you have Abaug7 (drop the flat ninth), Abaug9 (the flat ninth becomes a ninth) or Ab7b9 (the sharp fifth becomes a fifth).
Abalt is an altered chord — a dominant seventh with its fifth or ninth moved. Altered dominant chords on every root.
On Abalt’s sound and use this page follows Mark Levine, The Jazz Theory Book (Sher Music, 1995). The shapes and the derived voicings come from different places, and both are explained in where the chords and the theory come from.