GmMaj7b5 guitar chord
The third voice from the top lowered an octave. The dropped voice becomes the bass, which is why a string is skipped.
- Tap a note to hear it
- Arrows change position
- Fingers, notes or intervals
- Play the chord
About GmMaj7b5 — drop 3 voicings
GmMaj7b5 is G, Bb, Db and F# — Gm7b5 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.
GmMaj7b5 notes and formula
| G | Bb | Db | F# |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ♭3 | ♭5 | 7 |
Rare tonic — a half-diminished chord with its seventh raised instead.
Also written GmM7b5 or Gm(maj7)b5. The same chord either way; which spelling you meet depends on who wrote the chart.
How to play GmMaj7b5
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.
GmMaj7b5 has 9 of them, on strings 5-3-2-1 and strings 6-4-3-2, from open position up to the 12th — every inversion the chord has: G in the bass, Bb in the bass, Db in the bass and F# in the bass. The one to learn first is the Bb shape at the nut.
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 xx5676 — no barre and low, at the 5th fret. None of the shapes for GmMaj7b5 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 11th.
| Frets | Where | Bass | Top | Hand |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3443x3 | 3rd fret | G, root position | G | barred |
| 34x322 | 2nd fret | G, root position | F# | all fretted |
| xx5676 | 5th fret | G, root position | Bb | all fretted |
| x-10-x-11-11-9 | 9th fret | G, root position | Db | all fretted |
| x-10-11-11-11-x | 10th fret | G, root position | Bb | barred |
The same notes rebuilt from scratch give 3 shell and 12 drop 2 voicings, each on its own page.
Tensions. A shell of GmMaj7b5, root, third and seventh, leaves a string free, and the tones that belong over it are the 11 (C) and the b13 (Eb).
What to play over GmMaj7b5
Every note of GmMaj7b5 is in G diminished.
Chords near GmMaj7b5
Change one note of GmMaj7b5 and you have Gdim (drop the major seventh), Gdim7 (the major seventh becomes a sixth), Gmaj7b5 (the minor third becomes a major third), Gm7b5 (the major seventh becomes a flat seventh) or GmMaj7 (the flat fifth becomes a fifth).
GmMaj7b5 is a diminished chord — root, minor third, flat fifth. Diminished and half-diminished chords on every root.
On GmMaj7b5’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.