About Abm6 — drop 3 voicings
Abm6 is Ab, Cb, Eb and F — Abm with a major sixth added on top.
It sounds bittersweet — minor underneath, major on top. The major sixth over a minor triad comes from the melodic minor, and it is the classic jazz minor tonic.
Abm6 notes and formula
| Ab | Cb | Eb | F |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ♭3 | 5 | 6 |
Minor tonic — an ending chord in a minor key.
Also written Abmin6, Ab-6 or Ab minor 6. The same chord either way; which spelling you meet depends on who wrote the chart.
How to play Abm6
The same operation one voice further down: the third voice from the top falls an octave and becomes the bass.
That leaves a bigger hole under the top three notes, so a string gets skipped: the muted string in the middle is the shape, not a mistake.
Abm6 has 9 of them, on strings 5-3-2-1 and strings 6-4-3-2, from open position up to the 12th — every inversion the chord has: Ab in the bass, Cb in the bass, Eb in the bass and F in the bass. The one to learn first is the Cb shape at the nut.
5 of them sit on strings 6-4-3-2, 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 x2314x — no barre and down at the nut. None of the shapes for Abm6 uses an open string, so every one of them is movable; the lowest sits at the 1st fret. 3 of the 8 need a barre. Together they cover the neck from the 1st fret to the 13th.
| Frets | Where | Bass | Top | Hand |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4x3444 | 3rd fret | Ab, root position | Ab | barred |
| x2314x | 1st fret | Cb, 1st inversion | Eb | all fretted |
| 466464 | 4th fret | Ab, root position | Ab | barred |
| xx6867 | 6th fret | Ab, root position | Cb | all fretted |
| x-11-9-10-9-11 | 9th fret | Ab, root position | Eb | all fretted |
| x-11-13-10-12-x | 10th fret | Ab, root position | Cb | all fretted |
| x-11-13-x-12-13 | 11th fret | Ab, root position | F | all fretted |
| x-x-13-13-12-13 | 12th fret | Eb, 2nd inversion | F | barred |
The same notes rebuilt from scratch give 5 shell and 14 drop 2 voicings, each on its own page.
Tensions. A shell of Abm6, root, third and seventh, leaves a string free, and the tones that belong over it are the 9 (Bb) and the 11 (Db).
How to use Abm6
How you get to it. The turn that lands on Abm6 is Bbm7♭5 to Eb7♭9: the ii and the V of Ab minor, which is where a minor tonic is usually arrived at rather than simply begun on.
In which keys. Every note of Abm6 belongs to Eb minor (the iv, the subdominant) and F# major (the ii, the supertonic).
What to play over Abm6
Every note of Abm6 is in Ab dorian, Ab melodic minor and Ab half-whole diminished.
Chords near Abm6
Change one note of Abm6 and you have Abm (drop the sixth), Abdim7 (the fifth becomes a flat fifth), Abm69 (add the ninth), Abm7 (the sixth becomes a flat seventh), AbmMaj7 (the sixth becomes a major seventh) or Abmadd9 (the sixth becomes a ninth).
Abm6 is a minor chord — root, minor third, fifth. Minor chords on every root.
On Abm6’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.