Gmaj7b5 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 Gmaj7b5 — drop 3 voicings
Gmaj7b5 is G, B, Db and F# — Gmaj7 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.
Gmaj7b5 notes and formula
| G | B | Db | F# |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 | ♭5 | 7 |
Coloured tonic — rare, and unstable for a major chord.
Also written GM7b5, GΔ7b5 or Gmaj7(b5). The same chord either way; which spelling you meet depends on who wrote the chart.
How to play Gmaj7b5
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.
Gmaj7b5 has 9 of them, on strings 5-3-2-1 and strings 6-4-3-2, from the 2nd fret up to the 12th — every inversion the chord has: G in the bass, B in the bass, Db in the bass and F# in the bass. The one to learn first is the B shape at the 2nd fret.
5 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 xx5677 — no barre and low, at the 5th fret. None of the shapes for Gmaj7b5 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 324422 | 2nd fret | G, root position | F# | barred |
| 3444x3 | 3rd fret | G, root position | G | barred |
| xx5677 | 5th fret | G, root position | B | all fretted |
| x-10-9-11-12-9 | 9th fret | G, root position | Db | all fretted |
| x-10-11-11-12-x | 10th fret | G, root position | B | all fretted |
The same notes rebuilt from scratch give 5 shell, 12 drop 2 and 6 open string voicings, each on its own page.
Tensions. A shell of Gmaj7b5, root, third and seventh, leaves a string free, and the tones that belong over it are the 9 (A) and the 13 (E).
How to use Gmaj7b5
How you get to it. The turn that lands on Gmaj7b5 is Am7 to D7 — the ii and the V of G — and D7 shares its third and seventh with Am7, so the hand barely moves between them.
In which keys. Every note of Gmaj7b5 belongs to D major (the IV, the subdominant) and B minor (the ♭VI).
What to play over Gmaj7b5
Every note of Gmaj7b5 is in G lydian.
Chords near Gmaj7b5
Change one note of Gmaj7b5 and you have Gmaj7 (the flat fifth becomes a fifth), Gmaj7#5 (the flat fifth becomes a sharp fifth), GmMaj7b5 (the major third becomes a minor third), G7b5 (the major seventh becomes a flat seventh) or G/F# (the flat fifth becomes a fifth).
Gmaj7b5 is a major chord — root, major third, fifth. Major chords on every root.
On Gmaj7b5’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.