B69 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 B69 — uncommon voicings
B69 is B, D#, F#, G# and C# — B6 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.
B69 notes and formula
| B | D# | F# | G# | C# |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 | 5 | 6 | 9 |
Also written B6/9, B6add9 or B six nine. The same chord either way; which spelling you meet depends on who wrote the chart.
How to play B69
Five notes and four fingers, so something has to go. Keep D# (it fixes the quality) and G# and C# (what the symbol is about). Let F# and B go, in that order — a perfect fifth says nothing the root has not, and in a band the bass has the root.
Play B69 as a shell — root, third and seventh — and the spare string takes the #11 (E#).
All 8 common shapes as fret numbers, lowest string first. Hover or tap one to see it drawn.
- x21122, 1st fret, B, root position, top note F#, barred
- x44444, 4th fret, C#, 9th in the bass, top note G#, barred
- 766677, 6th fret, B, root position, top note B, barred
- xx9899, 8th fret, B, root position, top note C#, barred
- x99899, 8th fret, F#, 2nd inversion, top note C#, barred
- x-11-11-11-12-11, 11th fret, G#, 6th in the bass, top note D#, barred
- x-14-11-13-12-11, 11th fret, B, root position, top note D#, all fretted
- x-14-13-13-14-14, 13th fret, B, root position, top note F#, barred
How to use B69
How you get to it. The turn that lands on B69 is C#m7 to F#7 — the ii and the V of B — and F#7 shares its third and seventh with C#m7, so the hand barely moves between them.
In which keys. Every note of B69 belongs to C# minor (the ♭VII), Eb minor (the ♭VI), E major (the V), F# major (the IV), Ab minor (the ♭III) and B major (the I).
What to play over B69
B69 is every note of the B major pentatonic, and nothing else. It also sits inside B major, B mixolydian, B lydian and B lydian dominant.
Each of those is a page: the scale across the neck, and the chords it harmonises into — which is where B69 sits in it. Every scale.
Chords near B69
Change one note of B69 and you have Bmaj9 (the sixth becomes the major seventh), Bmaj13 (add the major seventh), Bm69 (the major third becomes the minor third), Badd9 (drop the sixth), B6 (drop the ninth) or B9 (the sixth becomes the flat seventh).
B69 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.