Chord & FretF#maj7 · Cavaquinho
Play a plain F#. Nice — but ground-floor nice. Now listen to the player: F#maj7 is the same house with high ceilings.
Listen first
What you just heard
Here's the curious part: F, the new note, lives a half step from F# — that close, it should grind. And it does. But A# and C# hold the room, so the grind turns into shimmer instead of a fight. Play the arpeggio again, no rush all the way to the last note and wait: you'll feel the spark without the fire. It's danger with a seatbelt on — which is why it sounds expensive.
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 go with the first position below; the position marked with ⭐ is the easiest to play. Then do the before-and-after: F#, then F#maj7. The second is the first one after sunset. Repeat until it stops sounding "wrong" — for a lot of people this chord feels odd on the first listen and addictive by the third.
2 more shapes of this chord on the neck
Chord & Fret Pro maps over 200,000 voicings and inversions — hear and play them all.
Precision Tuner — Before you play these shapes, get in tune — chromatic tuner and reference tones · see it in Chord & Fret
Higher up the neck this chord becomes comping carpet — the kind of sound that flatters any voice on top. Positions are right below.
Left-handed? Mirror's right here
What is F#maj7?
F#maj7: F# Major with Major Seventh. The notes are F#, A#, C#, E# (fixed-do: Fa#, La#, Do#, Mi#) — the degrees 1–3–5–7.
Where this chord lives
Across keys, F#maj7 works as IVmaj7 in C# major, IIImaj7 in D# minor, Imaj7 in F# major — almost always the deluxe I or the elegant IV. It was bossa nova's signature and became the world's: today it shows up from jazz to indie without asking permission.
Transpose & Capo — Need it in another key? Move the whole chart and find the easiest capo · open in Chord & Fret
Identify Chord — Found a shape on your own fretboard? The app names it back · try it in Chord & Fret
Where it tends to go
Treating F#maj7 as the home chord (I) of its key, it usually moves toward the pre-dominant (G#m / B) or the dominant (C# / E#°) — and the dominant pulls back home. Typically, not a rule.
Every shape of F#maj7 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.
When you want to go further
For improvising, F# Ionian (F# G# A# B C# D# E# · 1 2 3 4 5 6 7: the plain major scale, where everything starts); F# Lydian (F# G# A# B# C# D# E# · 1 2 3 #4 5 6 7: the major scale with a raised fourth — one extra step of daydream); F# Lydian ♯2 (F# G## A# B# C# D# E# · 1 #2 3 #4 5 6 7: a lydian with a raised second, harmonic-major color) wrap the whole chord. And the jazz shapes at the end are the same four notes spread across the neck, for the day you want to sound like an arranger.
F# Ionian
4 more scale positions on the neck
That's over 35,000 mapped scale shapes in Chord & Fret Pro, ready to play.
The same F# Ionian 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 F#maj7 as home, the F# Ionian scale fits entirely — it contains every note of the chord. And when the dominant (C#) pulls back, the leading tone F is the note that wants to resolve home.
Swaps that work:
- Ebm7 — Relative minor (vi) — same tonic function
- Bbm7 — Mediant (iii) — tonic function
Reharmonize — Want richer substitutions? Reharmonize the progression in a tap · use 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
If at some point you want the ground back, it's one click away: F# without the seventh. The house hasn't moved.