- Intro
Advanced Chords - Intro
Learn how to extend your barred chord shapes!Go to Advanced Chords.
- Extend Major Chords
Extend Major Chords
Learn how to extend major chords into maj7 and dom7!Go to Maj-Maj7 Chords.
Go to Maj-Dom7 Chords.
- Extend Minor Chords
Extend Minor Chords
Learn how to extend minor chords into min7 and min7b5!Go to Min-Min7 Chords.
Go to Min7-Min7b5 Chords.
- Cycle Of 4ths
Chords Cycle Of 4ths
The key exercise to learning your chord shapes!Go to Chords Cycle Of 4ths.
- Dom7 Cycle Of 4ths
Dom7 Chords Cycle Of 4ths
Run your dom7 chord shapes through the cycle of 4ths!Go to Dom7 Chords Cycle Of 4ths.
- Maj Cycle Of 4ths
Maj7 Chords Cycle Of 4ths
Run your maj7 chord shapes through the cycle of 4ths!Go to Maj7 Cycle Of 4ths.
- Min7 Cycle Of 4ths
Min7 Chords Cycle Of 4ths
Run your min7 chord shapes through the cycle of 4ths!Go to Min7 Chords Cycle Of 4ths.
- Min7b5 Cycle Of 4ths
Min7b5 Chords Cycle Of 4ths
Run your min7b6 chord shapes through the cycle of 4ths!Go to Min7b5 Chords Cycle Of 4ths.
- What’s next?
What's next?
Next up is to organize all chords around every major scale shape!Go to What's next?
More Chords
Learn how to build add9, sus2 and dim chords!Go to More Advanced Chords.
Master Chords
Extend your chords even further! Go to Master Chords.
The min7b5 chord belong to chord VII!
The min7b5 is chord VII from the chords within a key concept, below displayed as 7th note chords.
You’d find the min7b5 in Jazz and a few rare artists like Sting and Stevie Wonder have both been known to spice up their hit progressions with this chord.
Since the chord is so rarely used, why should you learn it in every shape?
Why learn the min7b5 chord?
There are two main reasons why you should know this chord.
- Min7b5 is good to know in order to complete your theory knowledge on the fret board.
- When it comes to soloing in Jazz, the min7b5 arpeggio can be used as an arpeggio substitution over the V chord.
To sum up: Learn the min7b5 chord and more importantly, the min7b5 arpeggio.
The final chord!
If we go back to our seven chords in a key, we see that it’s only chord VII that has a b5 inside it.
| Chords: |
Cmaj7 | Dm7 | Em7 | Fmaj7 | G7 | Am7 | Bm7b5 |
| Roman: | I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII |
This means we can not use a minor pentatonic over chord VII since that scale has a perfect 5th, not a b5.
Once you’ve gone around the houses and tried relating the min7b5 chord to the blues scale, taken out the 4th etc you will most likely be back where you started.
The best thing to do is to learn the min7b5 arpeggio.
To do that you need to outline the chord shape first, so start your journey towards full completeion of the fretboard with learning all 5 shapes of the min7b5 chord.
