Emaj7b5 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 Emaj7b5 — drop 3 voicings
Emaj7b5 is E, G#, Bb and D# — Emaj7 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.
Emaj7b5 notes and formula
| E | G# | Bb | D# |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 | ♭5 | 7 |
Coloured tonic — rare, and unstable for a major chord.
Also written EM7b5, EΔ7b5 or Emaj7(b5). The same chord either way; which spelling you meet depends on who wrote the chart.
How to play Emaj7b5
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.
Emaj7b5 has 8 of them, on strings 5-3-2-1 and strings 6-4-3-2, from open position up to the 11th — every inversion the chord has: E in the bass, G# in the bass, Bb in the bass and D# in the bass. The one to learn first is the Bb shape at the nut.
4 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 xx2344 — no barre and down at the nut. 1 of the 7 shapes here sits in open position. 4 of the 7 need a barre. Together they cover the neck from the 1st fret to the 13th.
| Frets | Where | Bass | Top | Hand |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 011140 | open position | E, root position | E | barred |
| xx2344 | 2nd fret | E, root position | G# | all fretted |
| x76896 | 6th fret | E, root position | Bb | all fretted |
| x7889x | 7th fret | E, root position | G# | all fretted |
| 0-11-13-13-11-11 | 11th fret | E, root position | D# | barred |
| 12-11-13-13-11-11 | 11th fret | E, root position | D# | barred |
| 12-13-13-13-x-12 | 12th fret | E, root position | E | barred |
The same notes rebuilt from scratch give 6 shell and 13 drop 2 voicings, each on its own page.
Tensions. A shell of Emaj7b5, root, third and seventh, leaves a string free, and the tones that belong over it are the 9 (F#) and the 13 (C#).
How to use Emaj7b5
How you get to it. The turn that lands on Emaj7b5 is F#m7 to B7 — the ii and the V of E — and B7 shares its third and seventh with F#m7, so the hand barely moves between them.
In which keys. Every note of Emaj7b5 belongs to Ab minor (the ♭VI) and B major (the IV, the subdominant).
What to play over Emaj7b5
Every note of Emaj7b5 is in E lydian.
Chords near Emaj7b5
Change one note of Emaj7b5 and you have Emaj7 (the flat fifth becomes a fifth), Emaj7#5 (the flat fifth becomes a sharp fifth), EmMaj7b5 (the major third becomes a minor third), E7b5 (the major seventh becomes a flat seventh) or E/D# (the flat fifth becomes a fifth).
Emaj7b5 is a major chord — root, major third, fifth. Major chords on every root.
On Emaj7b5’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.