BbmMaj11 guitar chord
The root left to the bass player. Frees a finger for a tension.
- Tap a note to hear it
- Arrows change position
- Fingers, notes or intervals
- Play the chord
About BbmMaj11 — rootless voicings
BbmMaj11 is Bb, Db, F, A, C and Eb — BbmMaj9 with the eleventh added on top.
It sounds dense and unresolved. Something is always omitted; the ♭3 and the natural 7 are what must not be.
BbmMaj11 notes and formula
| Bb | Db | F | A | C | Eb |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ♭3 | 5 | 7 | 9 | 11 |
Minor tonic — the melodic minor as far up as a guitar carries it.
Also written BbmM11 or Bbm(maj11). The same chord either way; which spelling you meet depends on who wrote the chart.
How to play BbmMaj11
Leave the root to the bass player. In a band nobody misses it, and the ear supplies it from the guide tones anyway.
The finger it frees goes to a tension, which is why these sound richer than the shape they came from rather than thinner.
BbmMaj11 has 25 of them, on the middle four strings, the top four strings and strings 5-3-2-1, from open position up to the 13th — every inversion the chord has: Db in the bass, F in the bass, A in the bass, C in the bass and Eb in the bass. The one to learn first is the C shape at the nut, which is the easiest grip here.
9 of them sit on the middle four strings, 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 x-x-8-8-10-9 — no barre. None of the shapes for BbmMaj11 uses an open string, so every one of them is movable; the lowest sits at the 1st fret. 5 of the 7 need a barre. Together they cover the neck from the 1st fret to the 14th.
| Frets | Where | Bass | Top | Hand |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| x11221 | 1st fret | Bb, root position | F | barred |
| x11331 | 1st fret | Bb, root position | F | barred |
| 667668 | 6th fret | Bb, root position | C | barred |
| x-x-8-8-10-9 | 8th fret | Bb, root position | Db | all fretted |
| x-8-8-8-10-9 | 8th fret | F, 2nd inversion | Db | barred |
| x-13-11-14-13-11 | 11th fret | Bb, root position | Eb | all fretted |
| x-13-13-14-14-13 | 13th fret | Bb, root position | F | barred |
The same notes rebuilt from scratch give 4 shell, 13 drop 2 and 8 drop 3 voicings, each on its own page.
Tensions. A shell of BbmMaj11, root, third and seventh, leaves a string free, and the tones that belong over it are the 13 (G).
How to use BbmMaj11
How you get to it. The turn that lands on BbmMaj11 is Cm7♭5 to F7♭9: the ii and the V of Bb minor, which is where a minor tonic is usually arrived at rather than simply begun on.
What to play over BbmMaj11
Every note of BbmMaj11 is in Bb harmonic minor and Bb melodic minor.
Chords near BbmMaj11
Change one note of BbmMaj11 and you have Bbmaj11 (the minor third becomes a major third), Bbm11 (the major seventh becomes a flat seventh) or BbmMaj9 (drop the fourth).
BbmMaj11 is a minor chord — root, minor third, fifth. Minor chords on every root.
On BbmMaj11’s sound and use this page follows Ted Pease & Ken Pullig, Modern Jazz Voicings (Berklee Press, 2001). The shapes and the derived voicings come from different places, and both are explained in where the chords and the theory come from.