Bmaj7#5 guitar chord
The third voice from the top lowered an octave. The dropped voice becomes the bass, which is why a string is skipped.
- Tap a note to hear it
- Arrows change position
- Fingers, notes or intervals
- Play the chord
About Bmaj7#5 — drop 3 voicings
Bmaj7#5 is B, D#, G and A# — Bmaj7 with the fifth raised a semitone.
It sounds weightless, with no pull in it. Unlike an aug7 there is no flat seventh dragging it anywhere, so it colours a tonic rather than replacing it with a dominant.
Tonic — the lydian augmented sound.
Bmaj7#5 notes and formula
| B | D# | G | A# |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 | ♯5 | 7 |
Also written BM7#5, BΔ7#5, B+M7 or Bmaj7(#5). The same chord either way; which spelling you meet depends on who wrote the chart.
How to play Bmaj7#5
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#5 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.
Play Bmaj7#5 as a shell — root, third and seventh — and the spare string takes the 9 (C#), the #11 (E#) or the 13 (G#).
All 8 common shapes as fret numbers, lowest string first. Hover or tap one to see it drawn.
- x21303, open position, B, root position, top note G, 1 open string
- x2534x, 2nd fret, B, root position, top note D#, all fretted
- xx5446, 4th fret, F##, 2nd inversion, top note A#, all fretted
- 76808x, 6th fret, B, root position, top note G, 1 open string
- xx9886, 6th fret, B, root position, top note A#, all fretted
- 7x8887, 7th fret, B, root position, top note B, barred
- x-x-9-12-11-11, 9th fret, B, root position, top note D#, all fretted
- x-14-13-12-11-11, 11th fret, B, root position, top note D#, all fretted
How to use Bmaj7#5
How you get to it. The turn that lands on Bmaj7#5 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.
Chords near Bmaj7#5
Change one note of Bmaj7#5 and you have Bmaj7 (the sharp fifth becomes the fifth), Bmaj7b5 (the sharp fifth becomes the flat fifth), Baug (drop the major seventh) or Baug7 (the major seventh becomes the flat seventh).
Bmaj7#5 is a major chord — root, major third, fifth. Major chords on every root.
The common shapes and the derived voicings come from different places, and both are explained in how this site is built.