There are a couple ways to to think of Minor 7 b5 chords (also known as Half Diminished chords). I prefer to think of them as 7th chords formed from the 7th mode of a Major Scale. Consider C Major. Its 7th mode is B Locrian, which has the notes, B, C, D, E, F, G, A. So to form the corresponding 7th chord for this mode, the B Minor 7 b5, you take the 1, 3, 5 and 7 notes. You get B-D-F-A.
Another way to think about it is to consider a regular Minor 7 chord. A B Minor 7 chord contains the notes B-D-F#-A, which are the 1, 3, 5 and 7 notes. So to form a B Minor 7 b5, we just flat the 5th. We then get B-D-F-A which are the same notes we arrived at above using the first method. That is the beauty of music - there are many ways to arrive at the same results, much like science and mathematics.
Above are the most common voicings for Minor 7 b5 chords.
You will note that unlike the previous chord voicings, in which we were able to leave the 5th interval out, since the 5th interval is essential for the Minor 7b5 chord's sound, we can not omit it.
In the next part of this article, I will show you useful fingerings for Minor 6 chords.
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