Now Is The Time For You To Know The Truth About Diminished Chord

Don’t you just hate it when you ask your guitar teacher about the diminished chord?

B.B King

Boy, does that open a can of worms!

Seriously, anything can happen.

It’s a familiar story and it goes something like this.

Your teacher usually says, “well you don’t have to worry about diminished chords you don’t see them too often and you can just leave them out anyway”.

You feel like you’re banging your head against a brick wall every time you muster up enough courage to ask.

Many would-be guitarists just leave it at that with the feeling that it’s all too much bother so we’ll just stick with a hand full of major and minor chords and all is right in the world.

You can teach a young person to get what he or she wants out of a piece of music – you can’t teach them what to want. – Andre Previn

But what happens to those brave souls that ask that all-important question WHY?

And you simply must know why something works

It’s not enough to know that something works, every competent musician has an enquiring mind and must know why something works!

Above all, we must get to the bottom of this mysterious Diminished chord, real detective work.

Barney Kessel

What Is A Diminished Chord?

Well, as it turns out Diminished chords and their close relatives the Half-Diminished and Diminished 7th are not evil just misunderstood.

You cower in fear when you learn there’s not only the Diminished chord to deal with but it’s relatives.

I know, you’ve sweated blood to try and get your head around this Diminished thing and only ended up more confused and frustrated than when you started.

News Flash: You’re not the only one

Back To The Future

Let’s start at the beginning.

Way back when I began my music career, I was working as a guitar teacher in a music store.

The owner of the store a very progressive chap and suggested to me that I should get some music formal music education.

I was already playing several nights a week but took on board the idea that street smarts were not enough if I was to be an effective teacher.

The store owner chose my teacher and paid for the tuition.

And so it began.

My formal music training started out without any problems, I did the exams, filled in the forms and became “qualified”.

However, at that stage, I was not aware that not all music teachers are created equal.

And I was certainly not aware that different types of theory existed!

Howard Roberts

Chord Families

Long story short, disappointed at the answers for my evergrowing list of questions a began doing a lot of my own research.

My major lightbulb moment was when I can across the concept of chords being derived from a parent scale.

If this concept is new to you check out Chord Construction 101.

The skinny is that if you stack a scale in layers (usually in thirds) you will create a family of chords.

In the key of C, the triads (three-note chords) created would be as follows:

C – Dm – Em – F – G – Am – Bdim

And there is our first sighting of the Diminished chord.

Wham! It hit me like a ton of bricks

Diminished Chords Are Minor Chords With Flattened 5th

Once I began to look at the actual notes in each chord and their parent scale the mysteries of the Diminished chord unraveled.

For instance, instead of looking at chord shapes I would focus on what notes were in each chord.

The notes in a Bm chord are: B – D – F#

Compared to the notes of a B Diminished chord: B – D – F

Therefore, it is easy to see that instead of thinking of the Diminished chord as a whole new thing, it’s really a minor chord with a flattened 5th.

Key: Diminished triads can be referred to as minor b5 chords

Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery. – Miles Davis

The Diminished Triad and the Half Diminished

What is the difference between a Diminished and the Half Diminished chord?

In a nutshell, the half-diminished chord is the four-note (scale tone 7th version of the Diminished chord).

Check out the video below which explains how Scale Tone 7th Chords Are Created From The C Major Scale.

Diminished Chord on String Grids

The first step to learning and thoroughly understanding the Diminished chord is to associate this new chord to shapes we already know.

For instance, if we were to play the three inversions of a B minor triad on the first three strings of our guitar.

Like this.





By the way, I label the first three strings string grid 1.

Then transform these B minor triads into B Diminished triads by flattening the 5th note of each minor chord.

Like this.

When we compare each B minor and B Diminished side by side its easy to understand why the Diminished chord could also be named minor flat five.

Here they are side by side.

Strange how much you’ve got to know Before you know how little you know. – Anonymous

Likewise, if we continue the concept of connected learning we could quickly learn the Diminished triads on string grid 2.

Lee Ritenour

String grid 2 would consist of the second, third and fourth strings.

To link grid 2 to string grid 1 all we have to do is play the note on the first string one octave lower.

We achieve this by relocating the note on the first string to the fourth string.

Remember to skip two strings (the 2nd and 3rd strings) and one fret.

Like this.

Linking 1st string to 4th string

Your string grid 2 chord shapes would look like this.

When you learn chords in this way you are creating memory pegs which makes it easy to instantly recall information.

In other words, you are not learning random pieces of information and chord shapes everything is linked to something else you already know.

In addition, you are becoming more familiar with the notes on the guitar fretboard as well as learning the chord spelling for each chord.

Joe Pass

Diminished Chord Formula

The traditional approach of constructing chords is by chord formulas.

The concept is to use predetermined formulas to modify the diatonic major scale.

For instance, if we were to construct the B Diminished chord we would begin with the B Major Scale and apply the Diminished chord formula.

The Diminished chord formula: 1-b3-b5

Therefore the process would go like this:

Begin with the B Major scale: B-C#-D#-E-F#-G#-A#-B

Select the first note: B

Flatten the third note: D

Then flatten the fifth note: F

As you can see we have arrived at the same answer as before when we altered the B minor chord to a B minor flat five.

Diminished Chord Spelling in all Keys

Chord Name Spelling Formula C diminished C-Eb-Gb 1-b3-b5 G Diminished G-Bb-Db 1-b3-b5 D Diminished D-F-Ab 1-b3-b5 A Diminished A-C-Eb 1-b3-b5 E Diminished E-G-Bb 1-b3-b5 B Diminished B-D-F 1-b3-b5 F# Diminished F#-A-C 1-b3-b5 Db Diminished Db-E-G 1-b3-b5 Ab Diminished Ab-B-D 1-b3-b5 Eb Diminished Eb-Gb-A 1-b3-b5 Bb Diminished Bb-Db-E 1-b3-b5 F Diminished F-Ab-B 1-b3-b5

Similarly, there are formulas for constructing every chord from the diatonic major scale.

For instance, the formula for constructing the major chord is 1-3-5.

Basic Chord Formulas

Chord Name Formula Example Major 1-3-5 C-E-G Minor 1-b3-5 C-Eb-G Augmented 1-3-#5 C-E-G# Diminished 1-b3-b5 C-Eb-Gb

In conclusion, rather than consider chords as being a vertical structure created from a parent scale, formulas like those listed above are used to identify the notes of a particular chord.

Whilst this system is 100% correct in so far as obtaining correct chord spelling it does not identify a chord function within a chord progression.

In other words, using the chord formula approach will tell you what notes are in a chord however it does not identify the harmonic environment of that chord in a composition.

If the concept of soloing over chord progressions is new, you might want to check out this on the 1-5-6-4 progression

Key Of The Moment

For example, using the chord formula approach I could spell the notes of a D minor chord.

Remember the process?

Start with the major scale of the name of the chord you want to spell.

In this instance, since I want to spell a d minor chord we would start with the D major scale.

D Major scale: D – E – F# – G – A- B – C# – D

Then use the minor chord formula: 1-b3-5

Resulting in.

D minor: D-F-A

However, what that does not tell me is that even on a basic triadic level that a D minor chord could exist in three Major keys.

Key of the moment

“You have to practice improvisation, let no one kid you about it!” Art Tatum

For example, the D minor could be:

Chord two in the key of C

The fourth chord in the key of G or

Chord six in the key of F

Therefore an isolated D minor could be thought of as being in any one of these three keys.

Once we add other chords it becomes apparent as to which key the chord progression is in.

The ability to recognize the key from a given chord progression is essential to the creative musician.

Eddie Duran

The Half Diminished Chord

At this point, it’s important to realize that there are three types of chords under the umbrella heading of Diminished.

As a result, there tends to be quite a lot of confusion as to their construct, origin, and application.

The first thing to remember is that the Diminished chord we have been studying is a three-note structure.

On the other hand, both the Half Diminished and the Diminished 7th chords are both four-note structures.

With this in mind let’s take a look at the Half Diminished chord and see how it compares to the Diminished triad.

Half Diminished AKA Minor 7th Flat Five

A point often overlooked is that the Half Diminished can also be named a minor 7th flat five!

They are the same chord only with two different ways of notating it.

The symbol for Half diminished is: Ø

Ø = Half Diminished, aka m7b5

For example, BØ could also be written as Bm7b5

So you can see that’s an area for confusion right of the bat, not to mention it’s application.

In order to be clear let’s take a closer look at these two chords.

Chord Name Formula Spelling B Diminished 1-b3-b5 B-D-F BØ 1-b3-b5-b7 B-D-F-A

Does this type of thinking stimulate your neurons?

If so, then I’ve got something else you’ll definitely want in on then …

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