F#maj7#5 guitar chord
Root, third and seventh: the guide tones fix the quality, so the fifth is dropped. That is what leaves a string free, so pick a tension to put on top.
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- Fingers, notes or intervals
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About F#maj7#5 — shell 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
Root, third and seventh. The third and seventh, the guide tones, are what make the chord major, minor or dominant, so the fifth can go: it says nothing the symbol needs.
Three notes means a spare string, which is the real point. Put a tension on it.
F#maj7#5 has 3 of them, on strings 6-4-3-2 and strings 5-3-2-1, from the 2nd fret up to the 14th — all in one inversion, so the bass note never moves. The one to learn first is the F# shape at the 2nd fret.
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 13 drop 2 and 9 drop 3 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.