Ab Major Chord Scale, Chords in The Key of A Flat Major

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| All Chords | C major | C minor | C# major | C# minor | D major | D minor | Eb major | D# minor | E major | E minor |
| F major | F minor | F# major | F# minor | G major | G minor | Ab major | Ab minor | A major | A minor |
| Bb major | Bb minor| B major | B minor |

The A flat major chord scale is a sequence of chord that are found in the A flat major key. You can use these chords to create chord progressions or melodies very quickly, while still sounding in key. The A flat major scale is great for creating feelings of judgement and death.

What Chords Are in The A Flat Major Scale?

To find out the chords in the A flat major chord scale, you need to understand what notes are in the A flat major scale.

The Ab major scale consists of:

Once you have these notes, you’ll be able to work out the chords by using chord scale formulas. These are similar to scale formulas if you’ve ever used those before to build piano scales.

Below are the major & minor chord scale formulas:

Because A flat major is in the major key, you’ll want to take the major chord scale formula. This is: Major Minor Minor Major Major Minor Diminished. You then plug every note into this sequence, and you’ll end up with the sequence of chords in the A flat major chord scale.

The A flat major chord scale consists of:

Now you can play each of these piano chords in their natural triad shapes and you will have the Ab major chord scale! If you don’t know your chord shapes yet, you can use chord spellings to work out the notes in each chord.

The most common chord spellings are:

• Major – 1, 3, 5
• Minor – 1, b3, 5
• Diminished – 1, b3, b5
• Augmented – 1, 3, #5

If we took an example of the 3rd chord (C minor), then you would build it by using the minor chord spelling, but use the chord spelling on the C major scale. This is because the spellings are designed to be used with the major scales.

For example: take the C major scale, count the 1 note (C), then the 3 note and move it a semi-tone down (E), then the 5 note (G).

Chords In The Key of A Flat Major

All of the chords above are found in the Ab major chord scale. You can use these chords in any position to make chord melodies. However, the basic triad shapes will sound fairly basic.

If you want to sound a bit more professional, you can use more advanced techniques like – adding extensions, bass notes and inversions. We cover this extensively in our Piano Chord Poster PDF guide, which comes with every purchase of a poster.

What Notes Are in The Chords of The A Flat Major Scale?

Once you have the chords in the A flat major chord scale, it’s important to understand the notes that make up the chords, so you know how to play them. If you already know your basic triad shapes, you can skip this section.

Here are the chords in the A flat major scale, with their respective notes:

1. Ab major – Ab, C, Eb
2. Bb minor – Bb, Db, F
3. C minor – C, Eb, G
4. Db major – Db, F, Ab
5. Eb major – Eb, G, Bb
6. F minor – F, Ab, C
7. G diminished – G, Bb, Db

Common Chord Progressions in Ab Major

When you know the chords and how to play them, it’s useful to use pre-made chord progressions to kickstart your melodies. You can use chord progressions in any scale. And to do so, you simply apply the roman numeral numbers to the corresponding number in your chord scale.

This will give you a pre-made progression that already sounds pretty good and you can build off. It’s great to use these as a base when drawing MIDI chords as it increases workflow exceptionally.

Anything with a 6, 7, 9 after it, is an extension chord, lowercase = minor, and uppercase = major.

Here’s a list of common chord progressions in A flat Major:

• vi – V – IV – V
• I – bVI – V
• I – vi – ii – V
• IV–I–V–vi