Cmaj7b5 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 Cmaj7b5 — drop 3 voicings
Cmaj7b5 is C, E, Gb and B — Cmaj7 with the fifth lowered a semitone.
It sounds hollow and hard to place. Far more often met spelled the other way round, as a ♯11 over a chord that kept its fifth.
Cmaj7b5 notes and formula
| C | E | Gb | B |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 | ♭5 | 7 |
Coloured tonic — rare, and unstable for a major chord.
Also written CM7b5, CΔ7b5 or Cmaj7(b5). The same chord either way; which spelling you meet depends on who wrote the chart.
How to play Cmaj7b5
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.
Cmaj7b5 has 8 of them, on strings 6-4-3-2 and strings 5-3-2-1, from open position up to the 11th — every inversion the chord has: C in the bass, E in the bass, Gb in the bass and B in the bass. The one to learn first is the Gb shape at the nut.
4 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 x32402 — no barre and 1 open string. 1 of the 6 shapes here sits in open position. 2 of the 6 need a barre. Together they cover the neck from the 2nd fret to the 12th.
| Frets | Where | Bass | Top | Hand |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| x32402 | open position | C, root position | Gb | 1 open string |
| x32452 | 2nd fret | C, root position | Gb | all fretted |
| x3445x | 3rd fret | C, root position | E | all fretted |
| 879977 | 7th fret | C, root position | B | barred |
| 8999x8 | 8th fret | C, root position | C | barred |
| x-x-10-11-12-12 | 10th fret | C, root position | E | all fretted |
The same notes rebuilt from scratch give 5 shell, 12 drop 2 and 6 open string voicings, each on its own page.
Tensions. A shell of Cmaj7b5, root, third and seventh, leaves a string free, and the tones that belong over it are the 9 (D) and the 13 (A).
How to use Cmaj7b5
How you get to it. The turn that lands on Cmaj7b5 is Dm7 to G7 — the ii and the V of C — and G7 shares its third and seventh with Dm7, so the hand barely moves between them.
In which keys. Every note of Cmaj7b5 belongs to E minor (the ♭VI) and G major (the IV, the subdominant).
What to play over Cmaj7b5
Every note of Cmaj7b5 is in C lydian.
Chords near Cmaj7b5
Change one note of Cmaj7b5 and you have Cmaj7 (the flat fifth becomes a fifth), Cmaj7#5 (the flat fifth becomes a sharp fifth), CmMaj7b5 (the major third becomes a minor third) or C7b5 (the major seventh becomes a flat seventh).
Cmaj7b5 is a major chord — root, major third, fifth. Major chords on every root.
On Cmaj7b5’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.