Bbmaj7#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.
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About Bbmaj7#5 — drop 3 voicings
Bbmaj7#5 is Bb, D, F# and A — Bbmaj7 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.
Bbmaj7#5 notes and formula
| Bb | D | F# | A |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 | ♯5 | 7 |
Tonic — the lydian augmented sound.
Also written BbM7#5, BbΔ7#5, Bb+M7 or Bbmaj7(#5). The same chord either way; which spelling you meet depends on who wrote the chart.
How to play Bbmaj7#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.
Bbmaj7#5 has 9 of them, on strings 5-3-2-1 and strings 6-4-3-2, from open position up to the 13th — every inversion the chord has: Bb in the bass, D in the bass, F# in the bass and A in the bass. The one to learn first is the Bb shape at the nut.
5 of them sit on strings 5-3-2-1, 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 x10232 — no barre and 1 open string. 1 of the 8 shapes here sits in open position. 1 of the 8 needs a barre. Together they cover the neck from the 1st fret to the 14th.
| Frets | Where | Bass | Top | Hand |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| x10232 | open position | Bb, root position | F# | 1 open string |
| x1423x | 1st fret | Bb, root position | D | all fretted |
| xx4335 | 3rd fret | F#, 2nd inversion | A | all fretted |
| xx8775 | 5th fret | Bb, root position | A | all fretted |
| 6x7776 | 6th fret | Bb, root position | Bb | barred |
| x-x-8-11-10-10 | 8th fret | Bb, root position | D | all fretted |
| x-13-12-11-10-10 | 10th fret | Bb, root position | D | all fretted |
| x-13-12-14-x-14 | 12th fret | Bb, root position | F# | all fretted |
The same notes rebuilt from scratch give 4 shell, 13 drop 2 and 6 open string voicings, each on its own page.
Tensions. A shell of Bbmaj7#5, 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 Bbmaj7#5
How you get to it. The turn that lands on Bbmaj7#5 is Cm7 to F7 — the ii and the V of Bb — and F7 shares its third and seventh with Cm7, so the hand barely moves between them.
Chords near Bbmaj7#5
Change one note of Bbmaj7#5 and you have Bbmaj7 (the sharp fifth becomes a fifth), Bbmaj7b5 (the sharp fifth becomes a flat fifth), Bbaug (drop the major seventh) or Bbaug7 (the major seventh becomes a flat seventh).
Bbmaj7#5 is a major chord — root, major third, fifth. Major chords on every root.
On Bbmaj7#5’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.