Amaj7b5 guitar chord
The third voice from the top lowered an octave. The dropped voice becomes the bass, which is why a string is skipped.
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About Amaj7b5 — drop 3 voicings
Amaj7b5 is A, C#, Eb and G# — Amaj7 with the fifth lowered a semitone.
It sounds hollow and hard to place. Far more often met spelled the other way round, as a ♯11 over a chord that kept its fifth.
Amaj7b5 notes and formula
| A | C# | Eb | G# |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 | ♭5 | 7 |
Coloured tonic — rare, and unstable for a major chord.
Also written AM7b5, AΔ7b5 or Amaj7(b5). The same chord either way; which spelling you meet depends on who wrote the chart.
How to play Amaj7b5
The same operation one voice further down: the third voice from the top falls an octave and becomes the bass.
That leaves a bigger hole under the top three notes, so a string gets skipped: the muted string in the middle is the shape, not a mistake.
Amaj7b5 has 8 of them, on strings 6-4-3-2 and strings 5-3-2-1, from open position up to the 11th — every inversion the chord has: A in the bass, C# in the bass, Eb in the bass and G# in the bass. The one to learn first is the G# shape at the nut.
4 of them sit on strings 6-4-3-2, so you can run the inversions up one set without changing strings — which is the whole reason to learn them as a family rather than as separate grips.
Start with x01124 — no barre and 1 open string. 2 of the 7 shapes here sit in open position. 2 of the 7 need a barre. Together they cover the neck from the 1st fret to the 14th.
| Frets | Where | Bass | Top | Hand |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| x01124 | open position | A, root position | G# | 1 open string |
| x01224 | open position | A, root position | G# | 1 open string |
| 546644 | 4th fret | A, root position | G# | barred |
| 5666x5 | 5th fret | A, root position | A | barred |
| xx7899 | 7th fret | A, root position | C# | all fretted |
| x-12-11-13-14-11 | 11th fret | A, root position | Eb | all fretted |
| x-12-13-13-14-x | 12th fret | A, root position | C# | all fretted |
The same notes rebuilt from scratch give 5 shell, 13 drop 2 and 1 open string voicings, each on its own page.
Tensions. A shell of Amaj7b5, root, third and seventh, leaves a string free, and the tones that belong over it are the 9 (B) and the 13 (F#).
How to use Amaj7b5
How you get to it. The turn that lands on Amaj7b5 is Bm7 to E7 — the ii and the V of A — and E7 shares its third and seventh with Bm7, so the hand barely moves between them.
In which keys. Every note of Amaj7b5 belongs to C# minor (the ♭VI) and E major (the IV, the subdominant).
What to play over Amaj7b5
Every note of Amaj7b5 is in A lydian.
Chords near Amaj7b5
Change one note of Amaj7b5 and you have Amaj7 (the flat fifth becomes a fifth), Amaj7#5 (the flat fifth becomes a sharp fifth), AmMaj7b5 (the major third becomes a minor third), A7b5 (the major seventh becomes a flat seventh) or A/G# (the flat fifth becomes a fifth).
Amaj7b5 is a major chord — root, major third, fifth. Major chords on every root.
On Amaj7b5’s sound and use this page follows Robert Rawlins & Nor Eddine Bahha, Jazzology (Hal Leonard, 2005). The shapes and the derived voicings come from different places, and both are explained in where the chords and the theory come from.