Calt 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 Calt — rootless voicings
Calt is C, E, G#, Bb and Db — C7 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.
Altered dominant — the hardest pull available.
Calt notes and formula
| C | E | G# | Bb | Db |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 | ♯5 | ♭7 | ♭9 |
Also written C7alt, C7altered or C altered dominant. The same chord either way; which spelling you meet depends on who wrote the chart.
How to play Calt
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.
Calt 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: E in the bass, G# in the bass, Bb in the bass and Db in the bass. The one to learn first is the Bb 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.
Five notes and four fingers, so something has to go. Keep E and Bb (they fix the quality) and G# and Db (what the symbol is about). Let C go — a perfect fifth says nothing the root has not, and in a band the bass has the root.
Play Calt as a shell — root, third and seventh — and the spare string takes the #11 (F#).
All 8 common shapes as fret numbers, lowest string first. Hover or tap one to see it drawn.
- x32x12, 1st fret, C, root position, top note Gb, all fretted
- x32552, 2nd fret, C, root position, top note Gb, all fretted
- x34550, open position, C, root position, top note E, 1 open string
- x34553, 3rd fret, C, root position, top note G, all fretted
- 87x978, 7th fret, C, root position, top note C, all fretted
- x-x-10-9-7-8, 7th fret, C, root position, top note C, all fretted
- 8-9-10-9-x-8, 8th fret, C, root position, top note C, all fretted
- x-x-10-11-13-12, 10th fret, C, root position, top note E, all fretted
How to use Calt
Calt is a dominant with its tension raised, so it still points at F — harder than a plain seventh does, because the altered tones sit a semitone from where they are going.
In a phrase:Gm7→Calt→Fmaj7— the ii–V–I of F.
Voice by voice, Calt → F. 4 voices move by a semitone, and one note is common to both chords.
| In Calt | Moves | In F |
|---|---|---|
| C, the root | stays where it is | C, the fifth |
| E, the major third | rises a semitone | F, the root |
| G#, the sharp fifth | rises a semitone | A, the major third |
| Bb, the flat seventh | falls a semitone | A, the major third |
| Db, the flat ninth | falls a semitone | C, the fifth |
What to play over Calt
Every note of Calt is in C altered.
Chords near Calt
Change one note of Calt and you have Caug7 (drop the flat ninth), Caug9 (the flat ninth becomes the ninth) or C7b9 (the sharp fifth becomes the fifth).
Calt is an altered chord — a dominant seventh with its fifth or ninth moved. Altered dominant 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.