About Bmaj7 — drop 3 voicings
Bmaj7 is B, D#, F# and A# — B with the major seventh added on top.
It sounds lush, and only just resolved. The everyday tonic of jazz, bossa and neo-soul.
Bmaj7 notes and formula
| B | D# | F# | A# |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 | 5 | 7 |
Tonic — a resting chord, but a soft one.
Also written BM7, BΔ7, BΔ, Bma7 or B major 7. The same chord either way; which spelling you meet depends on who wrote the chart.
How to play Bmaj7
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.
Bmaj7 has 9 of them, on strings 6-4-3-2 and strings 5-3-2-1, from open position up to the 12th — every inversion the chord has: B in the bass, D# in the bass, F# in the bass and A# in the bass. The one to learn first is the F# shape at the nut.
5 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 xxx446 — no barre and only 3 fretted notes. None of the shapes for Bmaj7 uses an open string, so every one of them is movable; the lowest sits at the 2nd fret. 4 of the 7 need a barre. Together they cover the neck from the 2nd fret to the 15th.
| Frets | Where | Bass | Top | Hand |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| x24342 | 2nd fret | B, root position | F# | all fretted |
| xxx446 | 4th fret | B, root position | A# | all fretted |
| xx4446 | 4th fret | F#, 2nd inversion | A# | barred |
| 798877 | 7th fret | B, root position | B | barred |
| x-x-9-11-11-11 | 9th fret | B, root position | D# | barred |
| x-14-13-11-11-11 | 11th fret | B, root position | D# | barred |
| x-14-13-15-12-x | 12th fret | B, root position | B | all fretted |
The same notes rebuilt from scratch give 5 shell and 14 drop 2 voicings, each on its own page.
Tensions. A shell of Bmaj7, root, third and seventh, leaves a string free, and the tones that belong over it are the 9 (C#), the #11 (E#) and the 13 (G#).
How to use Bmaj7
How you get to it. The turn that lands on Bmaj7 is C#m7 to F#7 — the ii and the V of B — and F#7 shares its third and seventh with C#m7, so the hand barely moves between them.
In which keys. Every note of Bmaj7 belongs to Eb minor (the ♭VI), F# major (the IV, the subdominant), Ab minor (the ♭III) and B major (the I, the tonic).
What to play over Bmaj7
Every note of Bmaj7 is in B major and B lydian.
Chords near Bmaj7
Change one note of Bmaj7 and you have B (drop the major seventh), Bmaj7b5 (the fifth becomes a flat fifth), Bmaj7#5 (the fifth becomes a sharp fifth), Bmaj9 (add the ninth), BmMaj7 (the major third becomes a minor third) or Badd9 (the major seventh becomes a ninth).
Bmaj7 is a major chord — root, major third, fifth. Major chords on every root.
On Bmaj7’s sound and use this page follows Mark Levine, The Jazz Theory Book (Sher Music, 1995). The shapes and the derived voicings come from different places, and both are explained in where the chords and the theory come from.