C#maj7#5 guitar chord
- Tap a note to hear it
- Arrows change position
- Fingers, notes or intervals
- Play the chord
About C#maj7#5 — root position
C#maj7#5 is C#, E#, A and B# — C#maj7 with the fifth raised a semitone.
It sounds weightless, with no pull in it. Unlike an aug7 there is no flat seventh dragging it anywhere, so it colours a tonic rather than replacing it with a dominant.
C#maj7#5 notes and formula
| C# | E# | A | B# |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 | ♯5 | 7 |
Tonic — the lydian augmented sound.
Also written C#M7#5, C#Δ7#5, C#+M7 or C#maj7(#5). The same chord either way; which spelling you meet depends on who wrote the chart.
How to play C#maj7#5
C#maj7#5 in root position puts C# in the bass, which is the chord as it is spelled: the note it is named after underneath everything else.
6 of C#maj7#5’s 7 common shapes do this: x43211, x435x5, x4756x, x-x-11-10-10-8, 9-x-10-10-10-9, x-x-11-14-13-13.
Start with x435x5 — no barre and low, at the 3rd fret. None of the shapes for C#maj7#5 uses an open string, so every one of them is movable; the lowest sits at the 1st fret. 1 of the 7 needs a barre. Together they cover the neck from the 1st fret to the 14th.
| Frets | Where | Bass | Top | Hand |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| x43211 | 1st fret | C#, root position | E# | all fretted |
| x435x5 | 3rd fret | C#, root position | A | all fretted |
| x4756x | 4th fret | C#, root position | E# | all fretted |
| xx7668 | 6th fret | G##, 2nd inversion | B# | all fretted |
| x-x-11-10-10-8 | 8th fret | C#, root position | B# | all fretted |
| 9-x-10-10-10-9 | 9th fret | C#, root position | C# | barred |
| x-x-11-14-13-13 | 11th fret | C#, root position | E# | all fretted |
The same notes rebuilt from scratch give 2 shell, 13 drop 2 and 9 drop 3 voicings, each on its own page.
Tensions. A shell of C#maj7#5, root, third and seventh, leaves a string free, and the tones that belong over it are the 9 (D#), the #11 (F##) and the 13 (A#).
How to use C#maj7#5
How you get to it. The turn that lands on C#maj7#5 is D#m7 to G#7 — the ii and the V of C# — and G#7 shares its third and seventh with D#m7, so the hand barely moves between them.
Chords near C#maj7#5
Change one note of C#maj7#5 and you have C#maj7 (the sharp fifth becomes a fifth), C#maj7b5 (the sharp fifth becomes a flat fifth), C#aug (drop the major seventh) or C#aug7 (the major seventh becomes a flat seventh).
C#maj7#5 is a major chord — root, major third, fifth. Major chords on every root.
On C#maj7#5’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.