F#maj7b5 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 F#maj7b5 — drop 3 voicings
F#maj7b5 is F#, A#, C and E# — F#maj7 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.
F#maj7b5 notes and formula
| F# | A# | C | E# |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 | ♭5 | 7 |
Coloured tonic — rare, and unstable for a major chord.
Also written F#M7b5, F#Δ7b5 or F#maj7(b5). The same chord either way; which spelling you meet depends on who wrote the chart.
How to play F#maj7b5
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.
F#maj7b5 has 9 of them, on strings 6-4-3-2 and strings 5-3-2-1, from open position up to the 13th — every inversion the chord has: F# in the bass, A# in the bass, C in the bass and E# in the bass. The one to learn first is the F# shape at the nut.
5 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 xx4566 — no barre and low, at the 4th fret. None of the shapes for F#maj7b5 uses an open string, so every one of them is movable; the lowest sits at the 1st fret. 4 of the 7 need a barre. Together they cover the neck from the 1st fret to the 15th.
| Frets | Where | Bass | Top | Hand |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 213311 | 1st fret | F#, root position | E# | barred |
| 2333x2 | 2nd fret | F#, root position | F# | barred |
| xx4566 | 4th fret | F#, root position | A# | all fretted |
| x-9-8-10-11-8 | 8th fret | F#, root position | C | all fretted |
| x-9-10-10-11-x | 9th fret | F#, root position | A# | all fretted |
| 14-13-15-15-13-13 | 13th fret | F#, root position | E# | barred |
| 14-15-15-15-x-x | 14th fret | F#, root position | A# | barred |
The same notes rebuilt from scratch give 6 shell and 14 drop 2 voicings, each on its own page.
Tensions. A shell of F#maj7b5, root, third and seventh, leaves a string free, and the tones that belong over it are the 9 (G#) and the 13 (D#).
How to use F#maj7b5
How you get to it. The turn that lands on F#maj7b5 is G#m7 to C#7 — the ii and the V of F# — and C#7 shares its third and seventh with G#m7, so the hand barely moves between them.
In which keys. Every note of F#maj7b5 belongs to C# major (the IV, the subdominant) and Bb minor (the ♭VI).
What to play over F#maj7b5
Every note of F#maj7b5 is in F# lydian.
Chords near F#maj7b5
Change one note of F#maj7b5 and you have F#maj7 (the flat fifth becomes a fifth), F#maj7#5 (the flat fifth becomes a sharp fifth), F#mMaj7b5 (the major third becomes a minor third) or F#7b5 (the major seventh becomes a flat seventh).
F#maj7b5 is a major chord — root, major third, fifth. Major chords on every root.
On F#maj7b5’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.