Understanding the Construction of minor7 Chords on Guitar

Question

I was watching a tutorial for Viceroy by Mac DeMarco with the following chord construction for a C#minor7 chord with the capo on the second fret:

I was confused by this chord construction considering I know that a C# minor scale consists of notes:

C# D# E F# G# A B

With a C# minor chord consisting of notes:

C# E G#

With a C#minor7 chord consisting of notes:

C# E G# B

Any help with my misunderstanding would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Two things:

• There's no capo in that chord diagram.
• It's not a C#m7 chord, it is a C#m7 flat five, which makes it an Em6 with C# in the bass. It says "b5" in parentheses. For the life of me I cannot understand why anyone would write it in smaller text and in parentheses, because the flat five makes all the difference and changes the whole meaning of the chord. If it was just C#m7, it would correspond to an E major chord, but now it's an E minor, totally different.

Here's a fixed version:

"Educated" jazz snobs dislike writing Em6/C#, but once again we see that beginners do not even see the "b5", let alone understand what it means. Em/C# or even just plain Em would retain the original meaning better and do less damage than C#m7 without flattening the fifth. Depending on the melody a C#m7 can sometimes work, but it also changes the mood.

The subject asks about construction, so here are the components of the chord. On the upper strings there's an E minor triad E, G, B, and then there's C# in the bass.

If we compare this to a regular C#m7 without the flat five (following a similar voicing), we see that now there's an E major triad E, G#, B, and the C# in the bass.

At the same time, there's another perspective to see C#m7-5: there's a C# diminished ("C#m-5" or flat five), and there's an added seventh

And finally, here's a different voicing for the same chord. I think this is not only easier to play, but it sounds nicer as well:

The only downside with this is, the Em shape isn't so clearly visible.

For completeness, maybe I should add that there are many different ways to write a half-diminished seventh chord as a chord symbol, e.g. C#m7-5 or C#m7♭5 or with a circle Cø7 or Cø. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-diminished_seventh_chord#Chord_symbols_and_terminology

Answer 2

If you look carefully at the chord symbol you'll see the chord is C#m7(b5), so the fifth is flattened (G#->G). The complete chord is C# E G B. You don't need a capo, the diagram shows the notes without a capo.
Possibly the chord is intended to sound as D#m7(b5), in which case you'd need to use the capo on the second fret and finger the C#m7(b5) chord as notated.

Answer 3

C#m7b5 means the 5th is diminished, so we have no G# but G (b5) should actually be not a flat but the natural sign: C#m => the m refers to the minor 3rd of C#-E, the 7 refers to the 7th of C# = B. Thus the chord is C#,E,G,B.

The signature m7b5 is the tetrad of the ii degree of a minor scale or the vii degree of the major scale: C#,E,G,B is the 2nd degree of B-minor respectively the 7th degree D-major key, like there e.g. Bm7b5 is ii7b5 of am and vii7b5 of C.