How & When to Use Diminished Chords on Guitar

this lesson will explain the theory behind diminished chords and their function there's a lot of confusion around how diminish chords work in music I often get asked the question of when to use them in a chord progression as with music in general there are no hard and fast rules except if it sounds good play it but I'll take you through some of the tried and tested functions diminished cords can serve in your music to diminish something means to lessen it diminish cords have an unstable sound which can be described as lessening or destabilizing the music they create an air of tension and unresolve which is what makes some wonderful chords to use in your music there are three main types of diminished chord as shown in this table diminish [Music] Triads half diminished [Music] chords and diminish seventh [Music] chords as you can see there's a common occurrence of the root minor 3 and flat fifth in the three types these are the most important tones in any diminished chord or scale the flat fifth in relation to a minor third is what gives it that unstable quality so a diminished Triad can simply be thought of as a minor chord with a flat fifth a half diminished chord is the same diminished Triad with an added flat 7th also known as a minor 7th this chord is also sometimes written as Min - 7 flat 5 a diminished seventh chord is a diminished Triad with an added diminished 7th now that's another way of saying double flat 7th so the only difference between a diminished sth and half diminished chord is the seventh is flattened another semitone in diminished seventh chords first just make clear in your mind these distinctions as each one has a different sound and function which we're going to look at now firstly occurrences of the diminished Triad are often extended to half diminished or diminished seventh chords because they sound more interesting essentially you're playing the diminish Triad in both these variations anyway so they're just a meteor more colorful version of the Triad so whenever there's an occurrence of a diminished C then you should try both half diminished and diminished sth and go with the one that sounds best to you let's look at some typical uses of the chord the first we're going to look at is known as a leading tone diminished chord in major Keys a half diminished chord naturally occurs on the seventh degree called the leading tone in plain English that means whatever the major tonic chord is the diminished chord naturally sits one semitone down from that it's called a leading tone or leading chord because it naturally resolves or leads to the tonic that example was in the key of C but you should be able to see this same leading tone chord and tonic relationship no matter what key you're in in minor keys and especially minor Keys based around harmonic minor a diminished seventh chord is the natural leading tone [Music] chord now we're going to look at what's known as an altered three chord in major key progressions the three chord which is naturally a minor chord is sometimes replaced with a half diminished three chord you'll hear this most commonly used in jazz here's an example again in the key of C major [Music] it's also commonly used in jazz to extend the 251 turnaround as [Music] follows you can hear how the tension in that half diminished three chord is transferred to the augmented seventh chord before the natural 251 resolution half diminish cords are also often used as the two chord of major and minor key progressions before the five [Music] chord [Music] we can also use a diminished seventh chord on that same two chord route in place of the five [Music] chord a diminished seventh chord can resolve to a chord with the same root this is known as a parallel chord change for example if the tonic was E [Music] major and you could also do the same with a minor tonic what this does is effectively destabilize the tonic now essentially you can fill any whole step interval between two chords in a scale with a diminished seventh chord for example here's the major dionic chord scale we can literally plug those whole step gaps between the one and two chords two and three chords four and five chords and five and six chords with a diminished seventh again you'll hear this most commonly used in jazz but there's no reason why it can't be used in music in general again playing in the key of C let's hear some examples of this [Music] technique [Music] those are pretty simple progressions but using that diminished sth plugging technique adds some spice and unpredictability there's more undiminished cords in the lesson on Fret jam.com including a really useful trick based on what is known as the symmetry of diminished seventh chords the there's also a chord chart showing you the different voicings and positions of the three diminished chord types the bottom line is to experiment with using diminished chords in your own songwriting cheers

Channel: fretjam

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Keywords: diminished guitar chords, diminished chords on guitar, diminished seventh chords, half diminished chords, diminished 7th chords, diminished chords, diminished chord theory, diminished chord progression, diminished chords lesson, dim7, m7b5

Id: sDEicex433w

Length: 9min 17sec (557 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 09 2012