guitar chord
E♭9
A dominant seventh carrying a ninth on top.
Written the other way round it is D♯9 — the same twelve keys on a piano, a different piece of notation.
Every fingering that fits a hand
xx1021
open · no 5
x6566x
hard · no 5
bdbcbd
hard · barre
babaxx
hard · no 5
xxdced
hard · no 5
What is true of it
E♭9 is E♭, G, B♭, D♭ and F — 1, 3, 5, b7 and 9 counted from E♭.
On an instrument that cannot reach all 5, the 5 and 1 go first, in that order.
The easiest of the 5 fingerings below is xx1021: 3 fingers, held at the 1st fret.
1 of them use open strings, which is what makes a shape quiet to change to.
1 of the 5 need a barre.
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 E♭, the root. Everything else is a chord tone with its degree printed in it.
With a different note underneath
E♭9/G
343343
E♭9/B♭
x11021
E♭9/D♭
x43043
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.