CmMaj7b5 guitar chord
Root, third and seventh: the guide tones fix the quality, so the fifth is dropped. That is what leaves a string free, so pick a tension to put on top.
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About CmMaj7b5 — shell 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
Root, third and seventh. The third and seventh, the guide tones, are what make the chord major, minor or dominant, so the fifth can go: it says nothing the symbol needs.
Three notes means a spare string, which is the real point. Put a tension on it.
CmMaj7b5 has 3 of them, on strings 5-3-2-1, strings 6-4-3-2 and the bottom four strings, from the 2nd fret up to the 7th — all in one inversion, so the bass note never moves. The one to learn first is the C shape at the 2nd fret.
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 12 drop 2 and 8 drop 3 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.