About DmMaj7b5 — drop 2 voicings
DmMaj7b5 is D, F, Ab and C# — Dm7b5 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.
DmMaj7b5 notes and formula
| D | F | Ab | C# |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ♭3 | ♭5 | 7 |
Rare tonic — a half-diminished chord with its seventh raised instead.
Also written DmM7b5 or Dm(maj7)b5. The same chord either way; which spelling you meet depends on who wrote the chart.
How to play DmMaj7b5
Take the four notes stacked as close together as they go, then drop the second voice from the top an octave. The gap it opens is what makes the chord sound like a chord rather than a cluster.
It lands on four adjacent strings, which is why it is the workhorse voicing on guitar.
DmMaj7b5 has 13 of them, on the top four strings, the middle four strings and the bottom four strings, from open position up to the 12th — every inversion the chord has: D in the bass, F in the bass, Ab in the bass and C# in the bass. The one to learn first is the D shape at the nut, which is the easiest grip here.
5 of them sit on the top 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 xx0121 — 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 1st fret to the 14th.
| Frets | Where | Bass | Top | Hand |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| xx0121 | open position | D, root position | F | 1 open string |
| x5x664 | 4th fret | D, root position | Ab | all fretted |
| x5666x | 5th fret | D, root position | F | barred |
| 10-11-x-10-9-9 | 9th fret | D, root position | C# | all fretted |
| 10-11-11-10-x-10 | 10th fret | D, root position | D | barred |
| x-x-12-13-14-13 | 12th fret | D, root position | F | all fretted |
The same notes rebuilt from scratch give 4 shell and 9 drop 3 voicings, each on its own page.
Tensions. A shell of DmMaj7b5, root, third and seventh, leaves a string free, and the tones that belong over it are the 11 (G) and the b13 (Bb).
What to play over DmMaj7b5
Every note of DmMaj7b5 is in D diminished.
Chords near DmMaj7b5
Change one note of DmMaj7b5 and you have Ddim (drop the major seventh), Ddim7 (the major seventh becomes a sixth), Dmaj7b5 (the minor third becomes a major third), Dm7b5 (the major seventh becomes a flat seventh) or DmMaj7 (the flat fifth becomes a fifth).
DmMaj7b5 is a diminished chord — root, minor third, flat fifth. Diminished and half-diminished chords on every root.
On DmMaj7b5’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.