Some chords walk into the room and announce themselves. The m7b5 sidles in, glances at the door, and quietly informs you that something is very wrong and it's probably your fault. It's the half-diminished sound — a minor chord that traded its perfect fifth for a flat one and immediately regretted nothing.
This 44-second clip is Exercise #10: melodic voice leading with minor 7b5 (half-diminished) arpeggios, marched through the circle of fourths so each shape hands off to the next with barely a finger moving. Consider it a field trip into the darker, jazzier end of the fretboard — bring a refresher on arpeggios if you need one.
How half-diminished voice leading works
An m7b5 arpeggio is four notes: root, minor third, diminished (flat) fifth, and minor seventh — for example B, D, F, A over a Bm7b5. Stacked up, that's a minor triad wearing a flat fifth, which is exactly the "ii" chord in a minor ii-V-i. The point of running it through the voice leading lens is that you stop leaping to a fresh root every bar and instead let the nearest chord tone do the moving.
Here's the useful takeaway: as you go around the circle of fourths (B to E to A to D…), the seventh of one m7b5 sits a half-step or whole-step away from the third of the next. So instead of resetting your hand into a new box, you hold a common note where one exists and slide the rest by the smallest interval available. Pick one string set, learn one m7b5 shape, and let voice leading carry you through all twelve keys — your fingers stay home while the harmony travels.
Warning: once your ears fall for the half-diminished sound, ordinary minor chords start to feel suspiciously well-adjusted. If you want the PDF and Guitar Pro file so you can suffer beautifully in tab, they're on my Patreon.