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

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°.