Fmaj7#5 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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About Fmaj7#5 — drop 3 voicings
Fmaj7#5 is F, A, C# and E — Fmaj7 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.
Fmaj7#5 notes and formula
| F | A | C# | E |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 | ♯5 | 7 |
Tonic — the lydian augmented sound.
Also written FM7#5, FΔ7#5, F+M7 or Fmaj7(#5). The same chord either way; which spelling you meet depends on who wrote the chart.
How to play Fmaj7#5
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.
Fmaj7#5 has 9 of them, on strings 5-3-2-1 and strings 6-4-3-2, from open position up to the 13th — every inversion the chord has: F in the bass, A in the bass, C# in the bass and E in the bass. The one to learn first is the C# shape at the nut.
5 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 xx3655 — no barre and low, at the 3rd fret. 1 of the 9 shapes here sits in open position. 3 of the 9 need a barre. Together they cover the neck from the 1st fret to the 15th.
| Frets | Where | Bass | Top | Hand |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 102220 | open position | F, root position | E | barred |
| 1x2221 | 1st fret | F, root position | F | barred |
| xx3655 | 3rd fret | F, root position | A | all fretted |
| x87655 | 5th fret | F, root position | A | all fretted |
| x879x9 | 7th fret | F, root position | C# | all fretted |
| x-8-11-9-10-x | 8th fret | F, root position | A | all fretted |
| x-x-11-10-10-12 | 10th fret | C#, 2nd inversion | E | all fretted |
| x-x-15-14-14-12 | 12th fret | F, root position | E | all fretted |
| 13-x-14-14-14-x | 13th fret | F, root position | C# | barred |
The same notes rebuilt from scratch give 4 shell, 13 drop 2 and 6 open string voicings, each on its own page.
Tensions. A shell of Fmaj7#5, root, third and seventh, leaves a string free, and the tones that belong over it are the 9 (G), the #11 (B) and the 13 (D).
How to use Fmaj7#5
How you get to it. The turn that lands on Fmaj7#5 is Gm7 to C7 — the ii and the V of F — and C7 shares its third and seventh with Gm7, so the hand barely moves between them.
Chords near Fmaj7#5
Change one note of Fmaj7#5 and you have Fmaj7 (the sharp fifth becomes a fifth), Fmaj7b5 (the sharp fifth becomes a flat fifth), Faug (drop the major seventh), Faug7 (the major seventh becomes a flat seventh) or F/E (the sharp fifth becomes a fifth).
Fmaj7#5 is a major chord — root, major third, fifth. Major chords on every root.
On Fmaj7#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.