Fortunately, with a little practice, it’s a fairly fun chord to learn to play. Listening to the Ab chord, it conjures a cheerful brand of recklessness and fun. Now that you have a better grasp on the concept of flats and sharps, let’s hone in on the Ab chord and learn a few ways to play it. Depending on the scale, the same exact note could be an Ab (a half-tone lower than A) or a G# (a half-tone higher than A). Since the Ab is a half-tone lower than the A note (a whole tone), it sits between the G note and the A note.

These half-tones on the musical scale are either a half-tone lower than a full note (a flat) or a half-tone higher than one note up on the scale (a sharp). A Lesson in Flats and Sharpsįlats and sharps in a scale are really just a matter of perspective. Let’s learn a little more about this chord, some different ways to play it, and some songs where it makes an appearance. While that “flat” can be deceiving, the Ab chord also goes by another name: the G# (or G sharp) chord. That quality makes it a natural fit for building a soundscape within uptempo rock and pop songs. I'm not sure of any theoretical basis for this other than that it's really just progressive movement along the chromatic scale in the case of semitone movement and the diatonic scale in the case of full tone movement.įrom a compositional perspective, it's a relatively simple matter to just try a semitonal or full tone chord change within the context of the song you are writing and just 'see' if it 'works' in the context of whatever song you happen to be composing.The Ab chord (sometimes written as A flat) has a bright, almost perky sound, despite its “flat” moniker. This happens a lot in jazz but you also see it in rock, pop and classical. You also often see the inverse of this, where only the base note moves in full tone or semitone steps while the harmony sticks to the primary chords of the key with a more pedestrian chord progression (e.g., ii-V-I or vi-ii-V-I). Often, the bass note sometimes is and sometimes is not a part of the harmonic triad. This is frequently employed as a major triad or one of its inversions. In addition to the other answers, there is a more general concept of full tone and semitone chord movement in chord changes in general.

B flat major chord