BbmMaj7b5 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 BbmMaj7b5 — drop 3 voicings
BbmMaj7b5 is Bb, Db, Fb and A — Bbm7b5 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.
BbmMaj7b5 notes and formula
| Bb | Db | Fb | A |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ♭3 | ♭5 | 7 |
Rare tonic — a half-diminished chord with its seventh raised instead.
Also written BbmM7b5 or Bbm(maj7)b5. The same chord either way; which spelling you meet depends on who wrote the chart.
How to play BbmMaj7b5
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.
BbmMaj7b5 has 9 of them, on strings 5-3-2-1 and strings 6-4-3-2, from open position up to the 12th — every inversion the chord has: Bb in the bass, Db in the bass, Fb 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 x-x-8-9-10-9 — 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 14th.
| Frets | Where | Bass | Top | Hand |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| x12220 | open position | Bb, root position | Fb | barred |
| 67x655 | 5th fret | Bb, root position | A | all fretted |
| 6776x6 | 6th fret | Bb, root position | Bb | barred |
| x-x-8-9-10-9 | 8th fret | Bb, root position | Db | all fretted |
| x-13-x-14-14-12 | 12th fret | Bb, root position | Fb | all fretted |
| x-13-14-14-14-x | 13th fret | Bb, root position | Db | barred |
The same notes rebuilt from scratch give 4 shell, 13 drop 2 and 1 open string voicings, each on its own page.
Tensions. A shell of BbmMaj7b5, root, third and seventh, leaves a string free, and the tones that belong over it are the 11 (Eb) and the b13 (Gb).
What to play over BbmMaj7b5
Every note of BbmMaj7b5 is in Bb diminished.
Chords near BbmMaj7b5
Change one note of BbmMaj7b5 and you have Bbdim (drop the major seventh), Bbdim7 (the major seventh becomes a sixth), Bbmaj7b5 (the minor third becomes a major third), Bbm7b5 (the major seventh becomes a flat seventh) or BbmMaj7 (the flat fifth becomes a fifth).
BbmMaj7b5 is a diminished chord — root, minor third, flat fifth. Diminished and half-diminished chords on every root.
On BbmMaj7b5’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.