Balt 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 Balt — rootless voicings
Balt is B, D#, G, A and C — B7 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.
Balt notes and formula
| B | D# | G | A | C |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 | ♯5 | ♭7 | ♭9 |
Altered dominant — the hardest pull available.
Also written B7alt, B7altered or B altered dominant. The same chord either way; which spelling you meet depends on who wrote the chart.
How to play Balt
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.
Balt has 14 of them, on the middle four strings, the top four strings and strings 5-3-2-1, from open position up to the 13th — every inversion the chord has: D# in the bass, F## in the bass, A in the bass and C in the bass. The one to learn first is the A shape at the nut, which is the easiest grip here.
5 of them sit on the middle 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 x2344x — down at the nut. None of the shapes for Balt uses an open string, so every one of them is movable; the lowest sits at the 1st fret. None of them needs a barre. Together they cover the neck from the 1st fret to the 14th.
| Frets | Where | Bass | Top | Hand |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| x21441 | 1st fret | B, root position | F | all fretted |
| x2344x | 2nd fret | B, root position | D# | all fretted |
| 76x867 | 6th fret | B, root position | B | all fretted |
| 78980x | 7th fret | B, root position | D# | 1 open string |
| xx9867 | 6th fret | B, root position | B | all fretted |
| 7898x7 | 7th fret | B, root position | B | all fretted |
| x-x-9-10-0-11 | 9th fret | B, root position | D# | 1 open string |
| x-x-9-10-12-11 | 9th fret | B, root position | D# | all fretted |
| x-14-13-x-12-13 | 12th fret | B, root position | F | all fretted |
The same notes rebuilt from scratch give 6 shell voicings, each on its own page.
Tensions. A shell of Balt, root, third and seventh, leaves a string free, and the tones that belong over it are the #11 (E#).
How to use Balt
Balt is a dominant with its tension raised, so it still points at E — harder than a plain seventh does, because the altered tones sit a semitone from where they are going.
Voice by voice, Balt → E. 4 voices move by a semitone, and one note is common to both chords.
| In Balt | Moves | In E |
|---|---|---|
| B, the root | stays where it is | B, the fifth |
| D#, the major third | rises a semitone | E, the root |
| G, the sharp fifth | rises a semitone | G#, the major third |
| A, the flat seventh | falls a semitone | G#, the major third |
| C, the flat ninth | falls a semitone | B, the fifth |
What to play over Balt
Every note of Balt is in B altered.
Chords near Balt
Change one note of Balt and you have Baug7 (drop the flat ninth), Baug9 (the flat ninth becomes a ninth) or B7b9 (the sharp fifth becomes a fifth).
Balt is an altered chord — a dominant seventh with its fifth or ninth moved. Altered dominant chords on every root.
On Balt’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.