CmMaj7b5 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 CmMaj7b5 — drop 3 voicings
CmMaj7b5 is C, Eb, Gb and B — Cm7b5 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.
CmMaj7b5 notes and formula
| C | Eb | Gb | B |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ♭3 | ♭5 | 7 |
Rare tonic — a half-diminished chord with its seventh raised instead.
Also written CmM7b5 or Cm(maj7)b5. The same chord either way; which spelling you meet depends on who wrote the chart.
How to play CmMaj7b5
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.
CmMaj7b5 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, Eb 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 x3x442 — no barre and down at the nut. None of the shapes for CmMaj7b5 uses an open string, so every one of them is movable; the lowest sits at the 2nd fret. 2 of the 5 need a barre. Together they cover the neck from the 2nd fret to the 12th.
| Frets | Where | Bass | Top | Hand |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| x3x442 | 2nd fret | C, root position | Gb | all fretted |
| x3444x | 3rd fret | C, root position | Eb | barred |
| 89x877 | 7th fret | C, root position | B | all fretted |
| 8998x8 | 8th fret | C, root position | C | barred |
| x-x-10-11-12-11 | 10th fret | C, root position | Eb | all fretted |
The same notes rebuilt from scratch give 3 shell and 12 drop 2 voicings, each on its own page.
Tensions. A shell of CmMaj7b5, root, third and seventh, leaves a string free, and the tones that belong over it are the 11 (F) and the b13 (Ab).
What to play over CmMaj7b5
Every note of CmMaj7b5 is in C diminished.
Chords near CmMaj7b5
Change one note of CmMaj7b5 and you have Cdim (drop the major seventh), Cdim7 (the major seventh becomes a sixth), Cmaj7b5 (the minor third becomes a major third), Cm7b5 (the major seventh becomes a flat seventh) or CmMaj7 (the flat fifth becomes a fifth).
CmMaj7b5 is a diminished chord — root, minor third, flat fifth. Diminished and half-diminished chords on every root.
On CmMaj7b5’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.