Bb69 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 Bb69 — uncommon voicings
Bb69 is Bb, D, F, G and C — Bb6 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.
Bb69 notes and formula
| Bb | D | F | G | C |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 | 5 | 6 | 9 |
Also written Bb6/9, Bb6add9 or Bb six nine. The same chord either way; which spelling you meet depends on who wrote the chart.
How to play Bb69
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 Bb go, in that order — a perfect fifth says nothing the root has not, and in a band the bass has the root.
Play Bb69 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.
- x10011, open position, Bb, root position, top note F, barred
- x33333, 3rd fret, C, 9th in the bass, top note G, barred
- 655566, 5th fret, Bb, root position, top note Bb, barred
- xx8788, 7th fret, Bb, root position, top note C, barred
- x88788, 7th fret, F, 2nd inversion, top note C, barred
- x-10-10-10-11-10, 10th fret, G, 6th in the bass, top note D, barred
- x-13-10-12-11-10, 10th fret, Bb, root position, top note D, all fretted
- x-13-12-12-13-13, 12th fret, Bb, root position, top note F, barred
How to use Bb69
How you get to it. The turn that lands on Bb69 is Cm7 to F7 — the ii and the V of Bb — and F7 shares its third and seventh with Cm7, so the hand barely moves between them.
In which keys. Every note of Bb69 belongs to C minor (the ♭VII), D minor (the ♭VI), Eb major (the V), F major (the IV), G minor (the ♭III) and Bb major (the I).
What to play over Bb69
Bb69 is every note of the Bb major pentatonic, and nothing else. It also sits inside Bb major, Bb mixolydian, Bb lydian and Bb lydian dominant.
Each of those is a page: the scale across the neck, and the chords it harmonises into — which is where Bb69 sits in it. Every scale.
Chords near Bb69
Change one note of Bb69 and you have Bbmaj9 (the sixth becomes the major seventh), Bbmaj13 (add the major seventh), Bbm69 (the major third becomes the minor third), Bbadd9 (drop the sixth), Bb6 (drop the ninth) or Bb9 (the sixth becomes the flat seventh).
Bb69 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.