guitar chord
C♯maj9
A major seventh with a ninth on top.
Written the other way round it is D♭maj9 — the same twelve keys on a piano, a different piece of notation.
Every fingering that fits a hand
x4354x
hard · no 5
98a8xx
hard · no 5
xxbadb
hard · no 5
What is true of it
C♯maj9 is C♯, E♯, G♯, B♯ and D♯ — 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9 counted from C♯.
On an instrument that cannot reach all 5, the 5 and 1 go first, in that order.
The easiest of the 3 fingerings below is x4354x: 4 fingers, held at the 3rd fret.
None of them uses an open string, so this chord moves up the neck unchanged — the same shape 1 fret higher is the chord a semitone above.
It leaves out the 5. 6 strings cannot carry 5 notes, and the 5 is the one this chord can lose without changing what it is.
2 strings stay silent.
Where its notes are on the neck
The brass dots are C♯, the root. Everything else is a chord tone with its degree printed in it.
With a different note underneath
C♯maj9/E♯
141111
C♯maj9/G♯
4635xx
C♯maj9/B♯
88b898
An inversion is the same chord with a different note lowest. The name changes to a slash name because the bass is what a listener hears as the foundation.