Yes, it’s a little hard to hold all those strings down and make it sound good. If you already know how to play the basic F major bar chord position, just move that baby up to the fourth fret and, bingo, you’ve got the Ab major chord. The A-Flat Major Chord Position on the Guitar: Get Ready to Put in a Little Extra Effort
One surprising exception is Scott Joplin’s ragtime piano piece, “Maple Leaf Rag,” written in 1899, a musical cup of of joie de vivre if ever there was one! So whatever you want to say about the key of A-flat, you just can’t pigeonhole it.
Perhaps its gloomy outlook didn’t actually endear it to composers- unless they were going through the dark night of the soul. Edward Elgar and Arnold Bax were among the very few who composed whole symphonies in A-flat major. The key of A-flat major is known for being morose, morbid, and melancholy, a key of death, judgment, condemnation, the grave, hauntings, and ghosts.īeethoven sometimes used A-flat major for movements within symphonies written in C minor, as did Anton Bruckner and Antonín Dvořák. Now that we’ve given G-sharp major its due, let’s start talking about its enharmonic equivalent, A-flat major. We’ll also jam through a few of A-flat’s songs and chord progressions.īut before we leave A-flat’s enharmonic equivalent, G-sharp, in the dust, we’ll just mention that it has been used occasionally in key passages in classical keyboard compositions, notably in Johann Sebastian Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier and in Frédéric Chopin’s Nocturnes in C-sharp Minor. Same series of notes, but a different name, notation, and key signature.īecause simplicity is a virtue we’re going to be looking at the A-flat guitar chord, exploring the key of A-flat’s history and its use in popular music, and talking about how hard it is to play the chord on the guitar. Practically speaking, we’d rather use G-sharp’s enharmonic equivalent, A-flat, which only has four flats. What is a theoretical key, you ask? It’s a key that really does exist- in theory. A-flat major is great at carrying lines like “Where your eyes don’t go a filthy scarecrow waves its broomstick arms and does a parody of each unconscious thing you do,” from They Might Be Giants. Because G-sharp has eight sharps (meaning one of the notes, F, has two sharps, making it actually a G) it’s considered a theoretical key. Today’s chord is G-sharp, which is more commonly known by its enharmonic equivalent, A-flat. G-Sharp or A-Flat: Death, Doom, and Pestilence- Maybe Songs in the Key of Ab Major: It’s Complicated.Chords and Common Chord Progressions in the Key of Ab Major.
Theory and Practice: The Pattern of the A-Flat Major Scale Explained.The A-Flat Major Chord Position on the Guitar: Get Ready to Put in a Little Extra Effort.G-Sharp or A-Flat: Death, Doom, and Pestilence- Maybe.
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