Diminished chords are a very unique sounding piano chord that are commonly used in classical music, in all jazz-based musical genres and even in some pop music tracks. Diminished chords can be used in a variety of different contexts so that we can create a range of tension based sounds, which can then be resolved in very beautiful ways.
For example, diminished chords are commonly used as passing chords or to help us add more harmonic complexity or dissonance to other kinds of chords. Here on this page, we will be explaining all of basic theory behind diminished chords, as well as covering all of the most popular ways to use diminished chords on piano.
C DIMINISHED
C DIMINISHED 7TH
We will be covering these diminished chords:
Diminished
Diminished 7th
* We will also be discussing when to play diminished chords as well as how to resolve them *
What Are Diminished Chords?
A diminished chord is unique in the fact that it is a triad that is made up of minor thirds. For example, to construct a C diminished chord, we start with the root note (C) and we go up a minor third (three half steps) to get our second note (Eb) and then we go up another minor third (three half steps) to get our third note (Gb).
For those who are new to this chord, if you play this chord just by itself, you probably won't think that it sounds beautiful on its own. But when you play this chord in the right context, it can help you to create a nice dissonance into your music, which you can then resolve beautifully into major, minor or another type of chord.
C DIMINISHED (3 MINOR THIRDS)
Pro Tip1 - Try playing a diminished chord followed by a major triad for a very simple resolution. Pro Tip2 - Try playing a diminished chord as a secondary dominant passing chord into a minor chord.
What are Diminished 7th Chords?
The diminished 7th chord offers a similar sound to the diminished chord because it only adds one more note, which is another minor third above. For example, if we start out with our C diminished chord (C-Eb-Gb) and we now add a fourth note which is a minor third above the Gb - this would be A. This now makes up a C diminished 7th chord.
One of the best things about the diminished 7th chords is that there are really only 3 diminished 7th chords that you need to learn. Once you have learnt these 3 chords (e.g. Cdim7th + Dbdim7th + Ddim7th), you just need to learn the inversions for these (4 inversions per chord) and you would have just learnt all of the 12 diminished 7th chords.
C dim 7th
C dim 7th 1st Inversion= Eb dim 7th
C dim 7th2nd Inversion= Gb dim 7th
C dim 7th 3rd Inversion = A dim 7th
Pro Tip - Try learning diminished 7th chords chromatically as it can help you with advanced passing chord sequences
How To Use Diminished Chords
Now that we know the basic theory about 'what are diminished chords' - we can start to think about how to use diminished chords to start creating beautiful sounds. To start with then, because the diminished chord and the diminished 7th chord give us a similar sound, we can choose to play either type of diminished chords on piano interchangeably.
1) Diminished 'Slide' Passing Chords
One of the most popular ways to use diminished chords is to use them as a passing chord. And one of the easiest ways to do this is to slide into a major or minor chord from a 1/2 step below. For example, lets say that we want to add diminished slides into a simple 1-6-4-5 chord progression (in the key of C major), it might look something like this:
Please note here that we are not saying that you SHOULD put diminished passing chords into all these locations but rather, we are just trying to demonstrate the principle here about sliding into chords with a diminished or diminished 7th chord. And just to make this super clear, let us now look at another chord sequence that we can add diminished chords slides into:
Simple Chord Sequence - C major (1) -> D minor (2) -> E minor (3) With Diminished Passing Chords - C major -> Db dim 7th -> D minor -> Eb dim 7th -> E minor
And again, please know that we could have easily used diminished OR diminished 7th chords in both of these chord progressions. Like always, the decisions you make about which chord to use will come down to the context of what you are playing so for example, will a diminished passing chord fit into the overall sound you are creating?
** Diminished v Dominants **
When using the diminished chord slide option, you may have noticed that the diminished chords we are using are almost identical to a secondary dominant chord. For example, let's look at a diminished chord slide into an A minor chord and compare it to a secondary dominant passing chord option to see if there are any differences:
Diminished chord slide option notes (Ab diminished triad into A minor triad)
Ab DIMINISHED (slides into Am)
A MINOR
E DOMINANT 7TH (slides into Am)
A MINOR
Can you see that the Ab diminished chord notes are the same notes as the 3-5-b7 of the E dominant chord?
Because of this similarity, the sound that you get from this diminished slide passing chord option versus a secondary dominant passing chord option is very similar. Also, because of this interrelationship between diminished & dominant chords, we can start using this to our advantage by combining dominant chords with diminished chords.
2) Using Diminished Chords WITH Dominant Chords
On our dominant chords page, we discussed the idea that dominant chords help to create a feeling of tension, which can then be resolved nicely to create an interesting experience for the listener. Also, on our altered chords page we introduced some of the ways that we can alter these dominant chords, to either add tension or change the overall sound of the chord.
So here, with diminished chords, we want to introduce you to one simple technique that can help to add some extra dissonance or tension with diminished chords. For this technique, we play a diminished 7th over a standard left hand dominant 7th voicing, to help us create a nice altered dominant chord sound. For example:
G DOMINANT (G-B-F) + Ab DIMINISHED (Ab-B-D-F)
Pro Tip1 - This technique will be helping you to create a dominant 7th b9 sound. More info about altered chords here Pro Tip2 - You can play a diminished 7th chord either 1/2 step above the dominant chord (or you can use any inversion).
3) The Extended Diminished 7th Slide
We mentioned earlier that you can slide into a major or minor chord using a diminished chord a 1/2 step below. So now, we want to introduce you to a few ways that you can use diminished 7th chords as part of a passing chord sequence into minor chords. The sound here is quite unique so just be sure to use it in context to what you playing at the time.
The basic idea here is that we will be using two diminished 7thvchords to help us create a passing chord sequence, which will be used to help us slide into a minor destination chord. For example, if we were playing in the key of C major and wanted to enter into an A minor chord, here are the diminished 7th chord passing sequences that we could play:
Technique 1 - F diminished 7th (D) -> Ab diminished 7th (F) -> A minor 7th (E) Technique 2 - C diminished 7th (A) -> D diminished 7th (B) -> A minor 7th (C)
In technique 1, you may have noticed that the F diminished 7th chord that we are using here is an inversion of the Ab diminished 7th sliding chord. In this way, technique 1 is simply an extension of the sliding technique whereby we use an inversion of the 'slide in chord' to help us extend our passing chord sequence.
Technique 2 is a little different from technique 1 but you will again notice that the D diminished 7th chord we are using here is an inversion of an Ab diminished 7th chord. Therefore, we are still technically using a 'slide in' technique but we are just using a different diminished 7th inversion to help us do this.
More often than not, there is a learning curve required so to help with this, we created our chord progressions page, to share some tips & tricks about how to combine chords. For example, we have created some learning packs which can help you to understand how to bring all these types of chords together, to create a very smooth & sophisticated sound.
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