F#maj7#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 F#maj7#5 — drop 3 voicings
F#maj7#5 is F#, A#, D and E# — F#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.
F#maj7#5 notes and formula
| F# | A# | D | E# |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 | ♯5 | 7 |
Tonic — the lydian augmented sound.
Also written F#M7#5, F#Δ7#5, F#+M7 or F#maj7(#5). The same chord either way; which spelling you meet depends on who wrote the chart.
How to play F#maj7#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.
F#maj7#5 has 9 of them, on strings 5-3-2-1 and strings 6-4-3-2, from the 2nd fret up to the 14th — 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 2nd fret.
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 xx4331 — no barre and down at the nut. None of the shapes for F#maj7#5 uses an open string, so every one of them is movable; the lowest sits at the 1st fret. 2 of the 8 need a barre. Together they cover the neck from the 1st fret to the 15th.
| Frets | Where | Bass | Top | Hand |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2x3332 | 2nd fret | F#, root position | F# | barred |
| xx4331 | 1st fret | F#, root position | E# | all fretted |
| xx4766 | 4th fret | F#, root position | A# | all fretted |
| x98766 | 6th fret | F#, root position | A# | all fretted |
| x-9-8-10-x-10 | 8th fret | F#, root position | D | all fretted |
| x-9-12-10-11-x | 9th fret | F#, root position | A# | all fretted |
| x-x-12-11-11-13 | 11th fret | C##, 2nd inversion | E# | all fretted |
| 14-x-15-15-15-x | 14th fret | F#, root position | D | barred |
The same notes rebuilt from scratch give 3 shell and 13 drop 2 voicings, each on its own page.
Tensions. A shell of F#maj7#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 F#maj7#5
How you get to it. The turn that lands on F#maj7#5 is G#m7 to C#7 — the ii and the V of F# — and C#7 shares its third and seventh with G#m7, so the hand barely moves between them.
Chords near F#maj7#5
Change one note of F#maj7#5 and you have F#maj7 (the sharp fifth becomes a fifth), F#maj7b5 (the sharp fifth becomes a flat fifth), F#aug (drop the major seventh) or F#aug7 (the major seventh becomes a flat seventh).
F#maj7#5 is a major chord — root, major third, fifth. Major chords on every root.
On F#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.