AbmMaj9 guitar chord
The third voice from the top lowered an octave. The dropped voice becomes the bass, which is why a string is skipped.
- Tap a note to hear it
- Arrows change position
- Fingers, notes or intervals
- Play the chord
About AbmMaj9 — drop 3 voicings
AbmMaj9 is Ab, Cb, Eb, G and Bb — AbmMaj7 with the ninth added on top.
It sounds the same unease with more colour over it. The ninth softens the edge without resolving anything.
Minor tonic — melodic minor, extended.
AbmMaj9 notes and formula
| Ab | Cb | Eb | G | Bb |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ♭3 | 5 | 7 | 9 |
Also written AbmM9, Abm(maj9) or Ab-Δ9. The same chord either way; which spelling you meet depends on who wrote the chart.
How to play AbmMaj9
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.
AbmMaj9 has 6 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 and Bb in the bass. The one to learn first is the Bb shape at the nut.
3 of them sit on strings 5-3-2-1, 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.
Five notes and four fingers, so something has to go. Keep Cb and G (they fix the quality) 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 AbmMaj9 as a shell — root, third and seventh — and the spare string takes the 11 (Db) or the 13 (F).
All 7 common shapes as fret numbers, lowest string first. Hover or tap one to see it drawn.
- 42x343, 2nd fret, Ab, root position, top note G, all fretted
- 4x5304, open position, Ab, root position, top note Ab, 1 open string
- 4253xx, 2nd fret, Ab, root position, top note Bb, all fretted
- 465446, 4th fret, Ab, root position, top note Bb, barred
- 666887, 6th fret, Bb, 9th in the bass, top note Cb, barred
- x-11-9-12-11-x, 9th fret, Ab, root position, top note Bb, all fretted
- 11-14-13-12-11-11, 11th fret, Eb, 2nd inversion, top note Eb, barred
How to use AbmMaj9
How you get to it. The turn that lands on AbmMaj9 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.
What to play over AbmMaj9
Every note of AbmMaj9 is in Ab harmonic minor and Ab melodic minor.
Chords near AbmMaj9
Change one note of AbmMaj9 and you have Abmaj9 (the minor third becomes the major third), Abm69 (the major seventh becomes the sixth), Abm9 (the major seventh becomes the flat seventh), AbmMaj7 (drop the ninth), AbmMaj11 (add the eleventh) or Abmadd9 (drop the major seventh).
AbmMaj9 is a minor chord — root, minor third, fifth. Minor 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.