Upright Bass: B m7#5 in the Changes

B m7#5 is B – D – F## – A. Naming the notes is where a chord chart stops. A tune asks the next question instead, and that is the one this page answers.

Nine times in ten a chart puts B m7#5 in the supertonic's place, and the submediant after that — so before working out a voicing, work out which key makes it that, because the key decides which notes the rest of the group has already taken.

The upright seat carries the walk — one note a beat, the change announced on beat one and the three notes after it deciding where the next change came from. Almost none of a chord is playable this low and almost none of it is wanted: whichever note is at the bottom is the chord as far as the room is concerned, so the question is which note, and on which beat.

The diagrams mark stopping points along the EADG fingerboard, not frets — there are none. Treat every dot as a place the hand has to find by ear, and use the playback to check that it did.