Minor-Major Seventh Chord

Take a minor triad and put a bright, unresolved major seventh on top instead of the expected minor seventh, and you get one of the strangest, most beautiful sounds in jazz harmony: dark and shadowy at the bottom, glinting and unresolved at the top. It’s the “spy movie” chord, the sound under the first two bars of “My Funny Valentine,” and the chord that proves minor keys don’t have to sound simply sad — they can sound haunted, glamorous, and a little dangerous.

What It Is and Why the Seventh Feels So Odd

Stack a minor third, a perfect fifth, and a major seventh on a root and you have a minor-major seventh chord: 1–♭3–5–7.

CmMaj7 = C–E♭–G–B
FmMaj7 = F–A♭–C–E
B♭mMaj7 = B♭–D♭–F–A
E♭mMaj7 = E♭–G♭–B♭–D

CmMaj7 — dark bottom, bright top

E♭b3

The minor 3rd (E♭) sets the dark floor while the major 7th (B) glints a biting half step below the root's octave — the clash between those two accented tones is the whole "spy chord" sound

Spelled out as arpeggios in three common keys:

Compare that to its two close relatives among Seventh Chords: a Minor Seventh Chord (1–♭3–5–♭7, dark all the way through) and a Major Seventh Chord (1–3–5–7, bright all the way through). The mMaj7 splits the difference — minor third below, major seventh above — and that mismatch of “moods” is exactly what gives it its unsettled, cinematic character. Measured from the 7 up to the ♭3 above it (B up to E♭), the interval is a diminished fourth — enharmonically a major third — and the 7 sits a biting half step below the root’s octave, which is part of why the chord feels so tightly wound.

Where It Actually Comes From: The Raised Seventh in Minor

The mMaj7 isn’t an exotic invention — it falls right out of how minor keys are built. Both The Harmonic Minor Scale and The Melodic Minor Scale raise the seventh degree to create a leading tone that pulls up into the tonic, the same job the leading tone does in major keys. Stack thirds on the first degree of either scale and you get 1–♭3–5–7 automatically: the minor-major seventh is simply the tonic chord of harmonic and melodic minor.

That’s why it functions so differently from a dominant chord even though it contains real tension. In Minor Key Harmony the mMaj7 is a stable, “at rest” tonic sonority — it doesn’t beg to resolve anywhere the way a dominant seventh does. Improvisers usually reach for the ascending melodic minor scale over it, since that scale already contains the major seventh natively and lines up cleanly.

The Voice-Leading Trick That Made It Famous

The most common way you’ll actually meet this chord is not as a static tonic but as one link in a descending chromatic chain — a classic example of a Line Cliche:

Cm  –  CmMaj7  –  Cm7  –  Cm6

The roots and triad stay put while the top voice walks down chromatically: G stays, but the note above it slides B → B♭ → A (major 7th → minor 7th → major 6th). This is the intro to “My Funny Valentine,” and it’s the single most recognizable use of the minor-major seventh in the standard repertoire — the chord isn’t chosen for its own sake so much as for the half-step it lets you carve out of a static minor tonic.

Notated, with the C–E♭–G triad held and the top voice walking C–B–B♭–A:

Landing on It: The Minor ii-V-i

The mMaj7 also shows up as the destination chord at the end of The Minor ii-V-i, where it replaces the plainer minor seventh tonic to add extra lift:

Dm7♭5 – G7♭9 – CmMaj7 (minor ii–V–i in C minor)

Here the altered dominant resolves into a tonic that still carries some brightness and tension rather than settling into total darkness — useful whenever a composer wants a minor cadence that doesn’t feel fully closed. In Chord Voicings and Chord Symbols, you’ll see this written as CmMaj7, Cm(maj7), C-Δ7, or CmM7 — all the same chord, notation varying by house style.

♫ Listen

Chet Baker — “My Funny Valentine” (Chet Baker Sings, 1954): the opening four bars are the textbook Cm–CmMaj7–Cm7–Cm6 line cliché — listen for the top note sliding down chromatically under the still triad.
Miles Davis — “Solar” (Walkin’, 1954): the tune opens directly on a minor-major seventh tonic rather than passing through it, showing the chord used as a genuine point of rest rather than a transitional color — compare with the harmonic language of Solar.
Vic Flick / Monty Norman — “James Bond Theme” (Dr. No, 1962): the guitar riff’s famous sustained closing chord is an extended EmMaj9, the pop-culture reason this sonority gets nicknamed the “spy chord” — you hear the minor-major clash in the first two seconds.