Diminished

There are only three diminished chords, and each one has 4 inversions. you can take any note in a diminished chord and make that the root... which will give you another inversion

• In Major, occurs on 7th scale degree
• In Natural Minor, occurs on 2nd scale degree
• In Melodic Minor, occurs on 2nd and 7th scale degree (which is a sharp 7)

as a Migration Chord

Diminished chords are commonly used as "migration chords", whereby they will take us from one chord to another

Examples

• Bennie and the Jets at "...that's been known to change the weather"
• All Star - Smash Mouth at "...get your game on, go play"

as a Line Cliche

They are also used as line cliches, where we start with a more or less "normal" note, and move through a progression by dropping the base tone.

• to the ear, it seems all we are doing is just walking down the bass, but in reality we are creating a chord progression.

Examples

• Life on Mars - David Bowie at the intro, the progression goes F - Am/E - A°/E♭

Diatonic

Although diminished chords appear at the 7th scale degree in the major scale, they are not often used like this.

• the reason is because it's considered to be an incomplete version of the dominant chord.
  • ex. in the key of C major, the 7th scale is a B°, and the dominant is a G⁷, which contains all the notes of the B°.

Variations

Diminished chords can exist in 3 forms:

Diminished Triad

Often, diminished triads are not used, and instead a minor 7th is added. This is called a half diminished chord

• consists of root - minor 3rd - flat 5

Half Diminished

A diminished triad with a minor seventh added

Fully Diminished (a.k.a Diminished Seventh)

A diminished triad with a diminished seventh added (ie. stacking minor thirds)

• note: diminished seventh is enharmonically equivalent to a major sixth

Note the relationship between a fully diminished chord and the seventh chord 2 whole steps down from it (e.g. a fully diminished D# and a B7). The only difference between these 2 chords is that the diminished 7th is flattened, which now serves as the root for the seventh chord.

Diminished sevenths are symmetrical, made of all minor thirds, so anything can be the root.

---

Backlinks

• Vocals