Guitar: Bb 7b9 in the Changes

Where Bb 7b9 sits once the key is named, and what this seat is responsible for while it sounds.

A# 7b9 chord diagram, starting at fret 1. Strings low to high: E 1st fret, A 1st fret, D open, G 3rd fret, B open, E 4th fret.

Bb 7b9 is Bb – Cb – D – F – Ab. Naming the notes is where a chord chart stops. A tune asks the next question instead, and that is the one this page answers.

Nine times in ten a chart puts Bb 7b9 in the dominant's place, and the blues tonic after that — so before working out a voicing, work out which key makes it that, because the key decides which notes the rest of the group has already taken.

The guitar seat carries the comp — the changes stated in three and four notes behind whoever is playing the melody, which in practice means dropping the root and playing the notes nobody else is covering — the third and the seventh first, everything else only if it fits under the hand.

Every shape is drawn for EADGBE across 6 strings, the open ones first and the movable ones up the neck after them, and each one plays back so you can hear the voicing before you commit it to a chorus.