Chord & FretA#7 · Cavaquinho
Say this out loud: "and the best part is..." — and stop right there. Uncomfortable, isn't it? The sentence is hanging. That discomfort has a sound: A#7 is a sentence without a period. Give the audio below a listen.
Listen first
What you just heard
Why does it sound unfinished? Inside A#7, two notes are at odds: D and G#. Go back to the audio and catch the arpeggio note by note and catch the second and the last note — the distance between them is the tritone, the tensest interval tonal music knows. A# and F keep the house standing while those two argue inside it. And an argument, you know, demands a resolution.
Now it's your hands' turn
On the cavaquinho, four steel strings tuned D–G–B–D pack the chord into a small, bright space — every finger counts. So grab the first position below; the position marked with ⭐ is the easiest to play. Now the experiment that explains this chord better than any explanation: play A#7, count to three, then play D#. Felt the door close? Do it again. That relief is the reason this chord exists.
2 more shapes of this chord on the neck
That's over 200,000 voicings and inversions in Chord & Fret Pro, ready to play.
Precision Tuner — Before you play these shapes, get in tune — chromatic tuner and reference tones · use it in Chord & Fret
Save the positions below for when the blues calls: over there, this chord is the house language.
Every shape of A#7 lives in Chord & Fret Pro — 4 instruments, 16 tunings, 41 chord types and 57 scales, in every key. Start free. Unlock everything with Pro. 100% offline. No ads, no trackers.
Left-handed? Mirror's right here
What is A#7?
A#7: A# Major with Seventh. The notes are A#, C##, E#, G# (fixed-do: La#, Do##, Mi#, Sol#) — the degrees 1–3–5–b7.
Where this chord lives
Its job is fixed: A#7 is a dominant, and dominants live as V7 in D# major. Plainly: where it enters, the song is about to leave the room. A chart full of 7th chords is a song that won't sit still.
Transpose & Capo — Need it in another key? Move the whole chart and find the easiest capo · try it in Chord & Fret
Identify Chord — Found a shape on your own fretboard? The app names it back · open in Chord & Fret
Where it tends to go
Treating A#7 as the home chord (I) of its key, it tends to go toward the pre-dominant (Cm / Eb) or the dominant (F / A°) — and the dominant pulls back home. Typically, not a rule.
When you want to go further
For soloing, A# Mixolydian (A# B# C## D# E# F## G# · 1 2 3 4 5 6 b7: the major scale with a lowered seventh — the blues accent); A# Lydian dominant (A# B# C## D## E# F## G# · 1 2 3 #4 5 6 b7: a mixolydian with a raised fourth: the dominant in formalwear) cover the whole chord. And look at the first swap on the list below: that's the famous tritone substitution, the twin dominant living three whole steps from here, the one arrangers reach for when they want to arrive at the same place by a prettier road.
A# Mixolydian
4 more scale positions on the neck
That's over 35,000 mapped scale shapes in Chord & Fret Pro, ready to play.
The same A# Mixolydian in its main shapes along the neck — pick whichever position sits under your hand. The rings mark the guide notes (the 3rd and 7th) that carry this chord's color.
Improvising in context
To improvise over A#7 as home, the A# Mixolydian scale fits entirely — it contains every note of the chord. And when the dominant (F) pulls back, the leading tone A is the note that wants to resolve home.
Swaps that work:
- E7 — Tritone substitution (shared 3rd–7th tritone)
- Fm7 — Forms a II–V: precede with this ii
- Bdim7 — Passing diminished (ascending)
Reharmonize — Want richer substitutions? Reharmonize the progression in a tap · see it in Chord & Fret
The same chord, dressed for jazz
Jazz Lab — Drop 2, drop 3 and shell in any key — the Jazz Lab opens them all · open in Chord & Fret
The question this page asked has a one-click answer: D#. Don't end the day without playing both in a row.