About Bbaug — triad voicings
Bbaug is Bb, D and F# — Bb with the fifth raised a semitone.
It sounds stretched, and suspended between keys. Its commonest job is passing between a major triad and its sixth or seventh, with the raised fifth as a single voice walking up.
Bbaug notes and formula
| Bb | D | F# |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 | ♯5 |
Passing chord — it belongs to no key in particular.
Also written Bb+, Bb(#5) or Bb augmented. The same chord either way; which spelling you meet depends on who wrote the chart.
How to play Bbaug
Three notes on one string set. No seventh, so nothing is claimed about the chord beyond its quality.
Thin on their own, excellent over a bass line or against someone else’s harmony.
Bbaug has 45 of them, on the bottom three strings, the bottom four strings, the top three strings, the top four strings, the low-middle three, the high-middle three, the middle four strings, strings 5-3-2-1 and strings 6-4-3-2, from open position up to the 14th — every inversion the chord has: Bb in the bass, D in the bass and F# in the bass. The one to learn first is the F# shape at the nut, which is the easiest grip here.
6 of them sit on the bottom 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 xxx332 — only 3 fretted notes and down at the nut. None of the shapes for Bbaug 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 13th.
| Frets | Where | Bass | Top | Hand |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| x1x332 | 1st fret | Bb, root position | F# | all fretted |
| xxx332 | 2nd fret | Bb, root position | F# | all fretted |
| x1433x | 1st fret | Bb, root position | D | all fretted |
| 65433x | 3rd fret | Bb, root position | D | all fretted |
| 6x8776 | 6th fret | Bb, root position | Bb | all fretted |
| xx8776 | 6th fret | Bb, root position | Bb | all fretted |
| x-x-12-11-11-10 | 10th fret | D, 1st inversion | D | all fretted |
| x-13-12-11-11-x | 11th fret | Bb, root position | Bb | all fretted |
What to play over Bbaug
Every note of Bbaug is in Bb whole tone and Bb altered.
Chords near Bbaug
Change one note of Bbaug and you have Bb (the sharp fifth becomes a fifth), Bbmaj7#5 (add the major seventh) or Bbaug7 (add the flat seventh).
Bbaug is a augmented chord — root, major third, sharp fifth. Augmented chords on every root.
On Bbaug’s sound and use this page follows Stefan Kostka, Dorothy Payne & Byron Almén, Tonal Harmony (McGraw-Hill, 8th ed., 2018). The shapes and the derived voicings come from different places, and both are explained in where the chords and the theory come from.