AmMaj7b5 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 AmMaj7b5 — drop 3 voicings
AmMaj7b5 is A, C, Eb and G# — Am7b5 with the seventh raised a semitone.
It sounds brittle and impossible to mistake. Scarce enough that most players meet it as a passing sonority rather than as a chord they chose.
AmMaj7b5 notes and formula
| A | C | Eb | G# |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ♭3 | ♭5 | 7 |
Rare tonic — a half-diminished chord with its seventh raised instead.
Also written AmM7b5 or Am(maj7)b5. The same chord either way; which spelling you meet depends on who wrote the chart.
How to play AmMaj7b5
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.
AmMaj7b5 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 xx7898 — no barre. 1 of the 6 shapes here sits in open position. 3 of the 6 need a barre. Together they cover the neck from the 1st fret to the 13th.
| Frets | Where | Bass | Top | Hand |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| x01114 | open position | A, root position | G# | barred |
| 56x544 | 4th fret | A, root position | G# | all fretted |
| 5665x5 | 5th fret | A, root position | A | barred |
| xx7898 | 7th fret | A, root position | C | all fretted |
| x-12-x-13-13-11 | 11th fret | A, root position | Eb | all fretted |
| x-12-13-13-13-x | 12th fret | A, root position | C | barred |
The same notes rebuilt from scratch give 4 shell and 13 drop 2 voicings, each on its own page.
Tensions. A shell of AmMaj7b5, root, third and seventh, leaves a string free, and the tones that belong over it are the 11 (D) and the b13 (F).
What to play over AmMaj7b5
Every note of AmMaj7b5 is in A diminished.
Chords near AmMaj7b5
Change one note of AmMaj7b5 and you have Adim (drop the major seventh), Adim7 (the major seventh becomes a sixth), Amaj7b5 (the minor third becomes a major third), Am7b5 (the major seventh becomes a flat seventh), AmMaj7 (the flat fifth becomes a fifth) or Am/G# (the flat fifth becomes a fifth).
AmMaj7b5 is a diminished chord — root, minor third, flat fifth. Diminished and half-diminished chords on every root.
On AmMaj7b5’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.