Songs that use Diminished Chords

this is a

diminished

chord c

diminished

it is like a minor chord but with the fifth degree lowered or diminished by a semitone and we can label it either with a small degree Mark it like this or simply writing the word dim next to it now as we can hear the diminished chord it is almost an inherently dissonant sound, particularly when we hear it in isolation like this, it's quite difficult to imagine what it could sound like. Nice or musical, but diminished

chords

are far from strange, obscure

chords

used to make dissonant sounding music to hear the true power and potential of diminished chords you need to hear them in context you need to hear them in a chord progression Benny and the Elton John's Jets uses a G sharp diminished chord as you can hear the gsh diminished chord allows this smooth movement from the G tonic chord to the two minor chords there was nothing to stop Elton from going directly from G to minor in this way, but by joining the gap with this diminished string we get a super smooth and satisfying climb to the A minor chord. the tension of the diminished string also injects a little more energy into a string progression when we are on the diminished string, the harmony sounds unresolved in Lim, giving the music a sense of forward momentum because our ears want to hear that chord diminished dissonant collapse forward. on a more consonant chord, this is the beauty of diminished chords, they introduce tension that wants to be resolved elsewhere, so they project the song forward, give it momentum and at the same time introduce drama and tension into the music on Don' t Look Back.

Anger by Oasis, a diminished chord is used to travel from the fifth g chord to the sixth chord of the key. A minor simultaneously creates some tension and also provides a super smooth way to travel between these two chords next to the ace. Take that look from outside your I face you Ain, if a wasis had stayed still on G for two measures instead of using a gsh diminic COR to close the gap, we wouldn't get the same satisfying release when we land on the minor chord. I stand out by the fireplace. get that look off your face, an Oasis has used their diminished string on the sharp fifth degree of the scale, but another common scale degree to construct a diminished string is the sharp fourth degree, the raised four, this is particularly common in the Jazz music.

We can see it here in the famous Georgia on My Mind by hogi Carmichael. Popularized by Ray Charles. Peace. In this example I find that the diminished chord lifts us from the fourth chord of the key to the tonic chord in second inversion, creating a classic, smooth and silky voice. leading between the three chords a more modern song to use the raised diminished fourth chord is none other than Smashmouth's allar in the chorus we go up from the four chord the B major to the diminished C and then down again it's a game, so instead of resolving the diminished string upwards to achieve that satisfying climb that we've seen in other examples so far here the diminished string simply introduces some tension and then returns to the normal fourth degree.

A similar use of diminished chords is the guitar riff from My Iron Lung by Radio Head. The end of the riff describes a diminished chord and then a C diminished chord, which gives the song an unnerving quality, as we have seen. In many of the examples so far, diminished chords are great for moving from one chord to another almost like a harmonic glue holding the chord progression together and even if used briefly, even if used when passing a diminished chord, it can really give cohesion to the progression of the album, for example, during the bridge when Billy Eish's party ends, this short ashar decay chord guide. we go up from the fourth chord of the key a to the fifth chord if they didn't have to add this they could have moved directly from a to be like that, but the short diminished string just provides that extra moment of interest and satisfaction. when he takes us from the fourth chord to the fifth chord also in the chorus of Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon and gar funcle, this short FP diminished chord gives us an even sweeter resolution of the tonic string, particularly as it is coupled with the spatial movement . from a natural movement to B flat once again, a very brief use of a diminished chord that doesn't have to be there for the song to work, but its inclusion only gives the harmony additional depth and richness, one of the best examples of decrease.

Chords that create smooth harmonic movement are line clichés. A line cliché is when we take a chord like F major, for example, and then with each subsequent chord in the progression we simply adjust its highest or lowest note in a semi-mythical key, so starting with this F chord , Then we could take the bottom F note and lower it to E natural and then for the next chord do that again so that E natural becomes E flat which results in this really smooth line between the different chords and although all we were focusing on while writing that progression is lowering the lowest note in the chord.

We're done with this chord progression which, as you can see, includes a diminished chord and this is actually exactly the progression used in the verse from David's Life on Mars, but with a similar cliche line. appears in his Elton John song at the end of the chorus we get this cliche line and it serves as one of the steps in that cliche line is this a diminished chord so far all the examples of diminished chords we've seen have not built on one of the dionic notes of the scale, but instead built on a chromatic note between the degrees of the scale, for example in Don't Look Back in Anger it was built on the sharp five and in Georgia in My Mind it was built on the 4 sharp, but diminished chords don't have to be built in chromatic scale degrees, we can have a diminished chord without even leaving the major scale.

If we diatonically construct a chord in the seventh degree of the major scale, then we will obtain a diminished chord. Triad, so in the C major scale we can naturally get a B diminished chord, although in practice we rarely see this dionic diminution chord used, the only examples I could find of this diminished chord in the 6th degree of the scale. They were from classical music pieces, for example here in Mozart's piano sonato number five we can see the C diminished chord in the left hand, which is the dionic diminution chord in the seventh degree because at this moment in the piece we are in the key of D major, the reason why the diminished chord built on the seventh degree of the scale is such a rare Beast is because it is generally considered an incomplete version of the dominant chord in the key of C major, for example, the D major chord. seventh of the key is this B diminished chord the dominant chord of the key the fifth chord is this G7 chord and as you can see and also here the top three notes of the G7 chord are just a B diminished triad, this means that both chords sound and function almost identically.

In the way they both introduce tension that ultimately wants to resolve back to the C major tonic string, the only difference is that I think most people would consider the G7 to be a more powerful resolution back to C major. , so the B diminished is kind of a mediocre version of that classic perfect cadence sound, but there is another diminished chord that we can play without using chromatic notes and this one is much more common if we build a chord on the second degree of the scale minor, the natural minor scale of that chord. It will be a diminished chord and unlike its major scale counterpart, this chord is generally considered much more useful, for example Maroon 5 used it here in their hit This love.

I already mentioned that diminished chords are tense, they're dissonant and they want to resolve somewhere else, but one of the great things about diminished chords, one of the things that makes them so versatile is that they don't really care where they resolve, they just want to resolve somewhere because diminished leads are inherently unstable and dissonant, our ears are quite happy to hear them resolve to any nearby major or minor chord, especially if each note of the diminished chord doesn't have to travel very far to reach the chord of resolution, our ears will be relieved to hear the diminished tension collapse into a good old reliable. major or minor chord, so for example, this D diminished chord could resolve to C could resolve to D to F to G to a to E flat to F sharp, of course, especially depending on what key it's in, some resolutions will sound more final than others. but all of these resolutions offer a point of relief from the tension of the diminished chord, the bols actually show us two possible resolutions of this D diminished chord in their track because at the end of each verse we get a diminished d chord the first time is resolved. down to the C minor tonic string, but at the end of the second verse, the D diminished chord now resolves to FSH major, now offering a different but also satisfying resolution.

Beyond this D diminished chord because it actually features another attenuated minish string, although I may not have seen it because it's disguised. It's this one, the DOR 7 flat 5, as the name suggests, a D minus 7 flat 5 is a D minus 7 with its flat fifth, but despite the name, if we look at the notes of this chord, we can see. that now we actually have a d diminished chord with a 7th added from above, so why isn't this chord just called D diminished 7? Well, this is because when it comes to putting 7ths in diminished chords, things get a little confusing, a dsh diminished 7 chord would be.

Actually, this chord is almost exactly the same as the chord we used because, but the seventh note, the highest note here in the chord has been lowered by another semi-minimal tone, unlike major and minor chords, where there are only two types of seventh. we can add a dominant seventh or a major seventh with diminished triads. In fact, we can add a third type of diminished seventh. This is because diminished chords have a low fifth, so by lowering the fifth we are actually opening up a little more space between the top note of the triad and the octave, so we can add another seventh note with any given diminished triad, we could add one of the three types of seventh, we could add the major seventh, which gives us a diminished major seventh chord, this is certainly a pretty rare chord. but it is good to recognize it because it effectively completes our set.

The second type of seventh that we could add to the diminished chord is a dominant seventh, which gives us the chord we saw because the minor 7 flat 5. The technical name for this chord is actually half diminished and it is usually labeled like this with a degree mark with a small line running through it, but because this symbol can be confusing to some players, many simply describe this chord as minus 7 FL five, as it is a slightly more self-explanatory way of playing this chord and Of course, there is the third and final type of seventh that we can add to our Diminished Triad: it is the diminished cotton and by adding the diminished cotton to the Diminished Triad we get a diminished seventh chord labeled with a degree mark followed by a seven or with the word dim followed by seven adding something diminished basically means adding a minor third on top of a diminished triad and interestingly, because a diminished triad is already just two minor3s stacked on top of each other, a diminished seventh chord is now three minor3 stacked on top of each other diminished seventh chords are like the evolved form of regular diminished triant they introduce more tension more dissonance and more possible options for resolution love is a losing game by amy win housee opens with an f diminished chord held this instantly introduces a tension a tonal question that must be answered and then we get that answer when the F diminished 7th chord resolves to the tonic C major 7th chord setting up the song In Motion God Only Knows by The Beach Boys features this chord of C diminished in the middle of its verse, this C diminished 7 chord resolves very clearly into the world of the E major chord and this movement from the second inversion of E major 7 to C diminished 7 and then back to the second E major inversion brings a satisfying sense of tension and release to In the middle of the verse, the chorus of Queen's We Are The Champions features two seven different diminished chords.

First, we get this F diminished 7, which injects a little extra drama into the chorus and at the same time plays us perfectly up to the G minor chord. Then soon after this we have two bars of attention-grabbing B flat diminished 7 which makes the return to the F tonic string even more cathartic. We are the CHS another song that uses two seven diminished chords is Michelle by The Beatles In fact, the guitar is actually justI play these chords as D diminished and B diminished diminished triads but the diminished s is being introduced by the vocal melody. An interesting element of these two seven diminished chords that we're getting here on Michelle is that they're actually inversions of each other. they are both using the exact same notes, remember I said before that a diminished seven chord is just 3 minor3 stacked on top of each other?

Well, the consequence of that is that if you invert a diminished seven chord you simply end up with a different diminished 7 chord if I take B diminished 7 and put the B on top leaving D as the lowest note, it's not a first inversion of the B diminished 7 chord or B diminished over D is now just a d diminished 7 chord. This is just a strange quirk of the way diminished s chords are constructed, but it's good to keep in mind when you're labeling your diminished seven chords. , so that's the diminished seven what some people would call a fully diminished chord, but what about the other type of seven? speaking of the half diminished seven, the minor 7 flat 5, well we've already seen the half diminished minor 7 flat 5 chord in operation because of The Beetles, but the Fab 4 actually used it again later on the same album for this one section of You Never Give Me Your Money here, the half-diminished chord or what I will henceforth call the minor 7 flat 5 acts as part of a 251 resolution back to the tonic chord of a minor break in the You.Never verse Give Me Your Money takes us on a little harmonic journey away from the minor tonic chord, so this 251 progression acts nicely to bring us home to the minor tonic chord, in fact the most common configuration you'll find on a minor.

The 7 flat 5 chord is part of a 251 progression. We can see it here in the classic jazz standard My Funny Valentine with my heart and also here in Between the Sheets by the Eely brothers lie next to me, of course, due to the nature Dissonant Diminished Chords It is very rare to find a piece of music that only uses diminished chords, so I have taken it upon myself to write this piece that exclusively uses diminished chords. There are definitely many more examples of diminished chords at work in classical

songs

, so if you can think of a great example, put it in the comments below and, as always, a huge thank you to everyone who supports me on Patreon, including the names that you see on the screen right now and Andre Sence Diaga Andy Deacon Andrew Andrew Brown Andrew. susman Austin Barrett Justin Russell Bob mckinstry Britney Parker Cameron illa Colin Aken Chris gabal Christopher Ryan David Rivers Donald Howard Dr Darren Wicks Elena schenko Eugene Leroy FD Hodor Greg kabowski H lolona heish brockelbank hernick Kutcher Hugo Miller Ivan Pang Jake Fisher James Koo J Cookin Sparger John Dy Josh sandelin Justin Viger Lee lson Mark zhen Max o'keef Songwriter Squad Melanie Sher Michael Vivien Nancy Gillard Nathan Lawrence Nathaniel Park Paul Miller Paul pail Peter duny Richard girlfriend Roger clay John Kennedy Steve Daly Steven Lazaro Tim Beaker H Aaron Trisha Adams Tim Payne Victor Levy vity flowers Vladimir kov VY and whan Fairbanks