Diminished chords in scales

There are four locations for a diminished 7th chord within the Harmonic Minor and Harmonic Major Scales.

If you treat the diminished 7th as a rootless 7b9 chord then you have four possibilities for modulation.

E.g., In C Harmonic Minor you have D, F, Ab and B diminished 7th chords.

Look at Bº7 as a rootless G7b9 which resolves to C minor.

The Dº7 can be seen as a rootless Bb7b9 offering the possibility to modulate to Eb major, (the relative major of C min), or Eb min.

The Fº7 can be seen as a rootless Db7b9, which can take you to Gb maj or min, and the Ab˚7 could be a rootless E7b9 which would take you to A min or maj.

You’ll see that each of these tonal centres are spaced in minor thirds, too: C A Gb Eb

Comments on Diminished chords in scales

  1. Will says:

    There’s a lot of great nuggets here. But I tend to get stuck in the weeds. I was thinking it’d be cool to have some higher level applied lessons – say composing a cohesive solo for a few choruses over common standards. Consider phrasing and theme/development using motifs and maybe even throwing in a few licks.

  2. Mike Outram says:

    Thanks, Steven. Will do something on that soon :)
    M

  3. steven says:

    thanks mike for doing this again the last series you done really helped me alot , refering to last post could you plz do a series on all the things you can do on all the things you are lol as im still trying to get to grips with this tune , thanks again for sharing your wisdom , best steven :)

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