Chords
The m7♭5 chord, in every key
The half-diminished is the quality most guitarists meet last — the ii that opens every minor cadence. This page holds every drop-2 shape of it: twelve fingerings across three string sets, each one playable, re-spelled and re-fingered for whichever root you pick.
Four notes, one uneasy sound
An m7♭5 chord is an m7 with its fifth flattened: C, E♭, G♭ and B♭ — degrees 1, ♭3, ♭5 and ♭7. One note moved a half step, and the round chord that was content anywhere becomes a chord that cannot settle. The name spells out the surgery — m7♭5, minor seven, flat five — and the same quality also goes by half-diminished, written ø. Keep it apart from º: a full diminished seventh flattens the seventh too, and belongs to a different sound entirely.
On every other seventh chord this site teaches, two notes do the talking: the third and the seventh, the guide tones. The half-diminished is the exception that article has to carve out — its ♭3 and ♭7 are exactly the two notes a plain m7 carries, so here the guide tones alone cannot tell you which chord you are hearing. The ♭5 is where the identity lives: one flattened note doing as much work as the guide tones together.
Pick a root
Everything below follows this selector. Pick a root and the cards re-finger to the nearest workable frets, the note names re-spell the way the new root demands, and the progression link at the bottom re-points to the right key. The order is the circle of fifths, the app's own — stepping one chip to the right moves everything up a fifth.
On the top four strings
The top four strings — D, G, B and e — are where comping mostly lives: clear of the bass register, quick to speak. This is the set the practice pages' voice-led progressions use. The four inversions climb the neck in order of their top note — the same ladder the app's Learn screen shows — and two of them sit inside two frets in every root: root position and the third inversion.
On the middle four
One set down — A, D, G and B — the same chord sits lower and rounder, still clear enough to comp with. The four inversions ladder up the neck here too, and this is the set that opens the hand: two of the four grips — the first and second inversions, whatever the root — run four frets end to end. That is still the ceiling. Like the m7, and unlike the maj7 with its five-fret stretches down here, the m7♭5 keeps every grip inside four frets.
On the bottom four
On E, A, D and G the voicing turns dark. Four close voices this low can blur — the same register problem that makes a six-string barre chord collide with a bass player — so these grips earn their keep in solo playing, or when nobody else is holding the low end.
Every sound on this page is the Drop2 app's own sampled guitar and bass — from the MuseScore General sound library, used under the MIT license.
The top note picks the shape
Four inversions are not four flavors of the same choice; each puts a different chord tone on top, and the top note is what a listener follows. Root position carries the ♭3 — E♭ — on top. First inversion carries the ♭5 itself, G♭: the one note that separates this chord from a plain m7, on top where the ear catches it first — when the color is the point, that is the card. Second inversion carries the ♭7, B♭; third inversion the root. Comping under a melody, choose the shape whose top note is the note you want heard. Moving between chords, choose the one nearest your hand — each voice taking its shortest path is the whole craft of voice leading. And every card here keeps its name: as on the m7, the ♭7 sits a whole step under the root, so the third inversion carries none of the sting that renames the maj7 page's third-inversion cards to 6.
The root inside the tritone
Like the dominant seventh, this chord carries a tritone — six semitones of instability. The difference is where it sits. The dominant keeps its root out of the argument: its tritone runs between the 3 and the ♭7, two color notes grinding above a solid foundation of root and fifth. Here the tritone runs between C and G♭ — between the root and its own fifth. The foundation itself is what itches. A chord whose root stands inside the tritone cannot be home, and jazz never asks it to be: the ø exists to lean.
Where it leans is always the same place. In the minor ii–V–i the ø opens the cadence, and its four notes are already halfway into the V7 that follows: the root and the ♭3 hold still — they are the V's fifth and seventh — while the ♭5 and the ♭7 each fall a half step, onto the V's root and its third. Half the chord holds, half of it falls, and the whole chord has changed jobs. The ♭5 that looks so foreign on paper is also less exotic than it seems: it is the ♭6 of the minor key the cadence lives in, a note the key signature already owns.
One grip, three names
Hold any card above and you are holding more than one chord. Read C, E♭, G♭ and B♭ from the ♭3 upward and they become root, minor third, fifth and sixth of E♭m6 — a minor sixth chord, the same four notes named from a different floor. The m7 page's grips hide the relative major's 6 chord this same way; here the mirror is minor. And it is more than a curiosity of spelling: in the minor key this chord opens, the m6 on its ♭3 is the iv chord, and arrangers swap the two without a second thought — the minor cadence page tells that story in full. Which name is the true one is decided by whoever holds the low register, and the with-bass button under each card plays this page's side of the argument.
There is a third name, and it needs a bass player too. Set any of these grips over a bass note a major third below the root and the four notes become a dominant ninth with the root left out — the 3, 5, ♭7 and 9 of the chord the bass is naming. Trading the root for a color tone is exactly how jazz voices its extended chords, so the shapes this page files under m7♭5 will come back to you later with a different name on the door.
Twelve fingerings, fewer sounds
Twelve cards, but fewer chords than that: from this root, the twelve fingerings make seven distinct sounds. The guitar repeats itself — the same four pitches recur on different string sets, at different heights up the neck — and every recurrence is in the cards above. Bottom note first, the duplicates right now are:
- E♭ B♭ C G♭ — Top 4 · 1st inversion, Mid 4 · 1st inversion, Bottom 4 · 1st inversion
- G♭ C E♭ B♭ — Top 4 · 2nd inversion, Mid 4 · 2nd inversion
- B♭ E♭ G♭ C — Top 4 · 3rd inversion, Mid 4 · 3rd inversion
- C G♭ B♭ E♭ — Mid 4 · root position, Bottom 4 · root position
This is worth a minute of disbelief with the play buttons: the grips look nothing alike, and the notes are the same. It also shrinks the job. Learn where the seven sounds live and the twelve fingerings become routes to them — when a chart calls for this chord, the useful fingering is whichever sits nearest your hand.
Where the m7♭5 does its work
Shapes are only half a chord; the other half is what it does in a progression — and this chord keeps exactly one address. Across the five forms on the practice pages, the m7 holds six jobs and the dominant eleven; the m7♭5 holds one. It is the ii of the minor ii–V–i, in the minor key a whole tone below its root — and that single address is a front door, because minor keys resolve through their ii–V exactly as major keys do, and in minor the ii is this chord. A short address book does not make a chord rare; it makes it specialized. From the root selected above, Cm7♭5 is:
- the ii of the minor ii–V–i in B♭ minor
The link opens the minor cadence page already set to the key in question, band ready to loop. If you want the m7♭5's job in one sound, listen to the loop's first bar lean into its second — the ø gathering the tension the V spends.
Where Drop2 comes in
These twelve shapes are the half-diminished slice of what the Drop2 app teaches — the slice most players arrive without. Learn lays the shapes out the way this page does, every quality, inversion and string set in the same degree colors; Train turns them into a drill — it calls out a voicing, you find it, and the app checks by ear, through the microphone, that the strings said what you meant. Play-Along, part of Premium, then puts the band from the practice pages behind you while you comp the changes yourself.
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