Bm9 guitar chord
The third voice from the top lowered an octave. The dropped voice becomes the bass, which is why a string is skipped.
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- Fingers, notes or intervals
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About Bm9 — drop 3 voicings
Bm9 is B, D, F#, A and C# — Bm7 with the ninth stacked above it.
It sounds warm, and considerably richer than an m7. The standard voicing for a ii chord once the plain one has been played enough.
Bm9 notes and formula
| B | D | F# | A | C# |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ♭3 | 5 | ♭7 | 9 |
Pre-dominant or minor tonic — an m7’s job with more colour.
Also written Bmin9, B-9 or B minor 9. The same chord either way; which spelling you meet depends on who wrote the chart.
How to play Bm9
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.
Bm9 has 8 of them, on strings 6-4-3-2 and strings 5-3-2-1, from the 2nd fret up to the 10th — every inversion the chord has: B in the bass, D in the bass, A in the bass and C# in the bass. The one to learn first is the A shape at the 2nd fret.
4 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 xx4635 — no barre and low, at the 3rd fret. 1 of the 8 shapes here sits in open position. 5 of the 8 need a barre. Together they cover the neck from the 2nd fret to the 14th.
| Frets | Where | Bass | Top | Hand |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| x20222 | open position | B, root position | F# | barred |
| x44435 | 3rd fret | C#, 9th in the bass | A | barred |
| xx4635 | 3rd fret | F#, 2nd inversion | A | all fretted |
| 75x675 | 5th fret | B, root position | A | all fretted |
| x57677 | 5th fret | D, 1st inversion | B | barred |
| 797779 | 7th fret | B, root position | C# | barred |
| 10-12-11-11-12-10 | 10th fret | D, 1st inversion | D | all fretted |
| x-14-12-14-14-x | 12th fret | B, root position | C# | barred |
The same notes rebuilt from scratch give 5 shell, 13 drop 2, 13 rootless and 6 open string voicings, each on its own page.
Tensions. A shell of Bm9, root, third and seventh, leaves a string free, and the tones that belong over it are the 11 (E) and the 13 (G#).
How to use Bm9
How you get to it. The turn that lands on Bm9 is C#m7♭5 to F#7♭9: the ii and the V of B minor, which is where a minor tonic is usually arrived at rather than simply begun on.
In which keys. Every note of Bm9 belongs to D major (the vi, the submediant), F# minor (the iv, the subdominant), A major (the ii, the supertonic) and B minor (the i, the tonic).
What to play over Bm9
Every note of Bm9 is in B dorian and B natural minor.
Chords near Bm9
Change one note of Bm9 and you have Bm69 (the flat seventh becomes a sixth), Bm7 (drop the ninth), Bm11 (add the fourth), BmMaj9 (the flat seventh becomes a major seventh), Bmadd9 (drop the flat seventh) or B9 (the minor third becomes a major third).
Bm9 is a minor chord — root, minor third, fifth. Minor chords on every root.
On Bm9’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.