F#7 guitar chord

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About F#7 — uncommon voicings

F#7 takes the stable major triad and gives it somewhere to go. The new voice is ; together the notes are F#, A#, C# and E.

sits a whole step below the next root. In the pair below, that single arrival changes a major chord from a resting point into a dominant.

Hear the change

One repeated root moves down a whole step to the flat seventh. The other notes stay the same.

Follow that pull to , the major chord a fourth higher. The third rises while the flat seventh falls, closing around the new root.

Also written F#dom7 or F# dominant 7.

F#7 uncommon guitar chord diagram: F#, A#, C#, E, played xx4320
F#7 uncommon guitar chord voicing: x-x-4-3-2-0.

What these less common shapes are

How to use F#7

1The pull home

V in B major

F#7 is the V of B major. Its third and seventh are a tritone apart, the most unstable interval there is, and each resolves by a half step into the I. The dominant a tritone away shares those two notes, so it resolves the same way.

Compare with

Listen for: The dominant’s seventh falls a half step to the third of the I. Under the tritone substitute it is the same note.

2The home chord of a blues

I7 in a blues

In a blues, F#7 is the home chord rather than a V: it moves to B7 and back without resolving. Its third and seventh each slide down a half step to become the seventh and third of B7, so the shape stays the same, one fret lower.

Listen for: Both notes above the bass drop one fret into the IV and come back: the third becomes the IV’s seventh.

Other uses

From the books, without a worked example
  • The VI7 of a turnaround
    VI in A major

    In the turnaround in A major, jazz players usually replace the vi chord with F#7, and usually alter it.

    1. Amaj7
    2. F#7
    3. Bm7
    4. E7
  • The Tad Dameron turnaround
    tritone substitutes in a turnaround

    Replace the VI7, II7 and V7 of a turnaround with their tritone substitutes and you get Fmaj7, Ab7, Db7, F#7. F#7 is the last, a half step above the I.

    1. Fmaj7
    2. Ab7
    3. Db7
    4. F#7

In which keys. Every note of F#7 belongs to Ab minor and B major.

What to play over F#7

Useful scales

Every scale

Chords near F#7

Remove a note

Change one note

Dominant seventh 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.

Midi Settings

7.5
Play Style
One pass of the pick from the lowest string up, everything left ringing.
Instrument
350
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Style

Shows each chord the way this style would voice it, and marks which of its alternatives belong to the idiom.

Layout

Left Handed Mode