Chord & FretF#maj7 · Guitar
You know the hotel-lobby pianist, playing so nobody leaves? This is their chord. F#maj7 is your regular F# with the window open — same house, more air. Hit play below and notice how it asks you to stay.
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 guitar, six strings give the chord room to breathe — some positions use them all, others ask you to mute the lowest ones. 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. Run it a few times: this chord tends to feel odd on the first pass 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 · try it in Chord & Fret
The mid-neck positions are the favorites of anyone backing a singer: up there, a maj7 turns into carpet. File that away for the day you play with someone.
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.
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. Bossa nova made it a signature and the world copied it; today you hear this chord from jazz to indie pop without it asking permission.
Transpose & Capo — Need it in another key? Move the whole chart and find the easiest capo · use 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 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. It's a tendency, not a law.
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
3 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 · 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
If at some point you want the ground back, it's one click away: F# without the seventh. The house hasn't moved.