G69 guitar chord
A close-position chord with the second voice from the top lowered an octave. Sits on four adjacent strings.
- Tap a note to hear it
- Arrows change position
- Fingers, notes or intervals
- Play the chord
About G69 — drop 2 voicings
G69 is G, B, D, E and A — G6 with the ninth added as well.
It sounds wide and entirely at rest. The modern way to voice a tonic when a triad is too bare and a maj7 too pointed.
G69 notes and formula
| G | B | D | E | A |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 | 5 | 6 | 9 |
Tonic — it commits to nothing.
Also written G6/9, G6add9 or G six nine. The same chord either way; which spelling you meet depends on who wrote the chart.
How to play G69
Take the four notes stacked as close together as they go, then drop the second voice from the top an octave. The gap it opens is what makes the chord sound like a chord rather than a cluster.
It lands on four adjacent strings, which is why it is the workhorse voicing on guitar.
G69 has 15 of them, on the bottom four strings, the middle four strings and the top four strings, from the 2nd fret up to the 14th — every inversion the chord has: G in the bass, B in the bass, E in the bass and A in the bass. The one to learn first is the G shape at the 2nd fret, which is the easiest grip here.
5 of them sit on the bottom four strings, 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 300000 — no barre and 5 open strings. 1 of the 9 shapes here sits in open position. 7 of the 9 need a barre. Together they cover the neck from the 2nd fret to the 15th.
| Frets | Where | Bass | Top | Hand |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 300000 | open position | G, root position | E | 5 open strings |
| 322233 | 2nd fret | G, root position | G | barred |
| xx5455 | 4th fret | G, root position | A | barred |
| x55455 | 4th fret | D, 2nd inversion | A | barred |
| x77787 | 7th fret | E, 6th in the bass | B | barred |
| x-10-7-9-8-7 | 7th fret | G, root position | B | all fretted |
| x-10-9-9-10-10 | 9th fret | G, root position | D | barred |
| x-12-12-12-12-12 | 12th fret | A, 9th in the bass | E | barred |
| 15-14-14-14-15-15 | 14th fret | G, root position | G | barred |
The same notes rebuilt from scratch give 4 shell, 10 drop 3, 15 rootless and 6 open string voicings, each on its own page.
Tensions. A shell of G69, root, third and seventh, leaves a string free, and the tones that belong over it are the #11 (C#).
How to use G69
How you get to it. The turn that lands on G69 is Am7 to D7 — the ii and the V of G — and D7 shares its third and seventh with Am7, so the hand barely moves between them.
In which keys. Every note of G69 belongs to C major (the V), D major (the IV), E minor (the ♭III), G major (the I), A minor (the ♭VII) and B minor (the ♭VI).
What to play over G69
G69 is every note of the G major pentatonic, and nothing else. It also sits inside G major, G lydian, G mixolydian and G lydian dominant.
Chords near G69
Change one note of G69 and you have Gmaj9 (the sixth becomes a major seventh), Gmaj13 (add the major seventh), Gm69 (the major third becomes a minor third), Gadd9 (drop the sixth), G6 (drop the ninth) or G9 (the sixth becomes a flat seventh).
G69 is a major chord — root, major third, fifth. Major chords on every root.
On G69’s sound and use this page follows Mark Levine, The Jazz Piano Book (Sher Music, 1989). The shapes and the derived voicings come from different places, and both are explained in where the chords and the theory come from.