Transcripts
1. Intro: Hey, and welcome to my course on understanding
diminished harmony. Now, this is a course
that I've been writing for about
three years now. I already have about 25
courses on the Internet, and the whole time
I was ready to jump in with this diminished
harmony course, but I wanted to make
sure that it was really ironclad and made a lot of sense because
diminished harmony can be, quite honestly, quite
confusing sometimes. Now, whether you're
hoping to learn more about diminished scales, the function of
diminished harmony, what a diminished seventh even is at the most basic level, I really want to make sure
that I take diminished harmony and blow away all the fog
so that you can start to use it in your own
original compositions or at least better understand what other composers
and songwriters were thinking when they
applied diminished harmony. Now, I've always said, I
harmony is the body of music, diminished harmony is the
veins and the nerves. It runs through everything
else, and as a result, it's a little bit
more abstract at times. It's a tense sound. It can take us to many
different places. But my hope is that this
course can help you have a framework for understanding diminished harmony so it
doesn't feel so confusing. Now, personally, I use diminished harmony quite often
as part of my modulation. There's a lot of
different chord shapes that when you change
them slightly, you get a diminished chord,
which can then take you to a whole new area within
your song harmonically. So that's one thing
that I'm going to be focusing on towards the
end of this course. But again, we're going to
start with the basics, and we're really
going to try to work our way up so that you can pause as needed,
digest the material apply the material and then jump back in when
you're feeling ready. Now, the class project within this course is going to be you taking either a song
that you're working on or a chord progression
that you already know. And you're going to
try to take one to two of these diminished
tricks that I've taught you within this course and apply it within that song
or progression. From there, you're going
to submit the project so that I can review it and
give you some feedback. Whatever diminished tricks
you choose should give you some sort of idea how you
enjoy diminished harmony. Is it as part of a modulation? Is it as part of
prolonged tension? It really depends on
what tricks you pick, but that's going to give
you a clear idea of what you appreciate the most
within diminished harmony. And as always,
there's going to be a full class outlining all the details for
this class project. So make sure that you check
it out before submitting. Now, by the time you're
done this course, you should feel more confident using diminished
chords as a composer. Understanding how
they're being used within some songs that
you're learning and just generally having access to this more menacing sound of diminished chords in
their various forms. I look forward to jumping
into this with you. We're going to start
off nice and basic, and we're going to
take things one notch higher at a time so
that you can understand the basics of diminished
harmony or really understand how to use them at
a more professional level. So up ahead are all of my favorite uses of
diminished chords. So let's start to break things
down one step at a time. I'll catch you in
the first class.
2. Class Project: This class project, you're either going to take
a song that you're writing or a song that someone else has written
that you're working on, and you're going to try
to implement one to two of these diminished tricks
within that composition. Now, you're going to have
to try various tricks in various spots within
the progression before it feels natural
and before it works. But when it does click and when it does feel
like it's working, that's something really
important to note. Is it that a certain
type of diminished chord is leading you in a
certain direction? Is it that you've changed
a certain chord into a diminished chord and you
really like that sound? This is ultimately going to
show you what you like about diminished harmony and how you might want to apply
it within the future. So don't just plunk
diminished chords into a progression
and then submit it. Make sure that you're doing
some trial and error and seeing what you like the most
in terms of the results. From there, you're
either going to do an audio or video recording that you will submit
to me through a link within the
course description. Can use YouTube or Vmeo if you're doing a
video submission, or you can use something
like SoundCloud if you're doing an
audio submission. But one way or another,
supply me with a public link so that I can easily check it out and
give you some feedback. Now, within this submission, I want you to make
sure that you're recording the
original progression, as well as this altered progression using the
diminished tricks. So once I've heard the
original progression and then this new progression
using the diminished tricks, I'll let you know how I
think it has improved, as well as some other
directions that you could have taken these harmonic
alterations. Make sure that you're recording things on
a day that you're feeling in the zone and
really ready to record. Do some prep work beforehand so you're not just rushing
through this project. I want to see the results of you really working
through what you think works best so that I can give you my most
honest feedback. So don't stress about it.
Have some fun with it. I hope you enjoy doing
this class project, and I'll catch you
in the next class.
3. What is a Diminished Chord: And Alright, let's dive into talking
about diminished harmony. First, we're just
going to talk about what is a diminished chord. A diminished chord
is sort of like a minor chord with a
flattened top note. So if we take something like C minor and take the top note
and lower it to semitone, we have C diminished. To diminish something
means to make it smaller. And that's, after all,
why we're calling these chords diminished chords. So we've taken a minor chord and we've flattened
the top note. Now, I want to be clear, a
chord like C sharp minor. When we flatten the top note, all I'm talking about is
lowering it a semitone. I'm not trying to say
that it always has to go to a flat black note. First learned this is a D flat, this is an E G flat
A flat B flat. But if you have something
like A G sharp, and you lower it to a G, that is also
flattening the note. So the top note goes down a semitone might be a more
universal way of saying it, but ultimately, we are
flattening that top note. Now, another way of thinking
about diminished chords is to move up a minor
third two times. So I have a C three
semitones is a minor third. Three semitones
is a minor third. Now I have C diminished. Another way of
thinking of diminished being small relating to these chords is
that minor chords use a minor third and
then a major third. So in other words, three
semitones, four semitones. A major chord goes up a major
third than a minor third. In other words, four semitones
than three semitones. But the diminished chord only uses the smaller of
those two intervals. So minor third, minor third, it's using the smaller
interval every time it is smaller,
it is diminished. These diminished chords
sound innately very spooky. Just give it a listen. I kind of sounds like the chord
they would use in, like, Halloween music or something tense in
a horror movie. They're meant to
represent tension and they want to resolve. You can probably even tell
where they want to resolve. Listen, if I go
through all the chords in a C major scale and I stop on the seventh where our diminished chord is located, you can hear this
attraction pulling up. So for now, I want
you to think of diminished chords as pulling
up one semitone to resolve. They will more often resolve
up to a minor chord, but they can resolve
to majors as well. So just listen, we
have B diminished to C major and B
diminished to C minor. The diminished to minor is
sort of like spooky to sad, whereas the diminished to major is sort of like
spooky to happy if I really gloss over the emotional quality
of these chords. That being said, spooky to
happy is very juxtaposed. Technically, it
works theoretically. It was used plenty
in the romantic era and classical and even
as late as Baroque, but it sort of caught
a second wind in the romantic era and got
used a lot in major music. Even something like Claire
DeLun in the first few bars, experiments with major
and diminished harmony. All that is to say,
the diminished resolving to minor just kind of makes more sense
in terms of what your harmony is
telling as a story. Now, diminished chords, as we first start to
learn about them, are situated on the
seventh degree of a major scale or a
harmonic minor scale. So where we're going to find
this chord if we go through C major is on that seventh note. You can see we have B,
up three semitones, up three semitones, or B minor with the
top note flattened. There is our B diminished chord. And this is also true for
harmonic minor scales. C harmonic minor, for example, is going to give us a lot of
different types of chords, where we have this sort of sound working up through
the different chords, and there it is, again, B diminished built on the
seventh scale degree. Here's B, we're skipping, D, we're skipping E
flat and F. Again, we're skipping no within our scale to create
these chords. As a function, diminished
chords are also used quite often as modulators to
take us into other keys. So if I'm in C minor, I can use a particular
diminished chord to take me into something
like F minor or G major or some other key to help extend a song so that you're not stuck in one key for too long. We will be discussing
modulations much later. I think it's class
eight, but for now, I just wanted to mention that there's going
to be plenty of use for these diminished
chords as modulators. So that is how a
diminished chord sounds, basically how they function, where you're going to find them and how they're constructed. In the next class,
we're going to expand them into diminished
seventh chords, where they sound a
little bit more tense and the harmony gets a
little bit more complex. So let's talk about
diminished seventh chords. I'll see you there.
4. Diminished 7th Chords: All right, let's talk about
diminished seventh chords. To start, they aren't
that much more complex in terms of how
to create the shapes, but their function can be quite intricate within
different progressions. So back to our
example of C major, if I was to start on
the seventh note, which is a B, skip a note to D, skip a note to F,
and skip a note. A, I don't quite get a
diminished seventh chord. So diminished seventh
chords are simply diminished chords with an
additional minor third. So we're thinking a note
to up three semitones, up three semitones,
up three semitones. In other words,
up a minor third, up a minor third,
up a minor third. And so with this extra
note that we've added, this distance from bottom to top is actually called a
diminished seventh. Sort of like a major
seventh chord, the outside notes
span a major seventh. Or a minor seventh chord, the outside notes
span a minor seventh. In this diminished
seventh chord, the outside notes span
a diminished seventh. But what is a
diminished seventh? So if I go from B to B, this is an octave, a letter up one pattern higher
to the same letter. Down a semitone is
a major seventh. Down a tone from that top
note is a minor seventh. And if I go down
one more semitone, I've stretched that seventh
as low as it can go. This is a diminished seventh. Now, it also looks a
lot like a major six, the sixth note from
a major scale, but it depends on
how you name it. So, for example, this
C to this G sharp, that is a major six. But what if I was to
call this note an A flat instead of a G sharp? BCDFGAG from B to
A is a seventh, a sharp was our major seventh, a natural was our minor seventh, and a flat is our
diminished seventh. What's really interesting
is this is where you can start to get things
like double flats. For example, C to
C is an octave, C to B is a major seventh. C to B flat is a minor seven C to B double flat is
a diminished seventh. So you always want to
first consider what is the letter that I'm
using for that seventh? And then what accidental, sharp, flat, double
flat, in this case? Which accidental do
I need to use to properly name it a
diminished seventh? Now, to be honest, the sharp doesn't find
its way in there, nor does it natural, but flats and double flats are
going to be very common. Now, back to C major
as our main key. If I go through all of
the chords in C major, as we talked about,
the seventh chord is going to be the
diminished chord. But if I go to make it
a diminished seventh, I'm pulling in a black note, A flat, which does not
come from C major. So where exactly are we
extracting this chord from? I first want to make it clear
that you could play a B diminished seventh and
resolve to C major. Plenty of people have done it. It's not staying absolutely
true to the key of C major, and technically, there's
something called the C harmonic major scale. I bet you probably
haven't heard of it, and I bet you probably
won't need to use it, but it sort of justifies
how we can pull out this B diminished seventh chord within a major
scale environment. That being said, where
we're going to naturally find this chord is in the
harmonic minor scale. So in C harmonic minor,
our notes are C, D, E flat, F, G A flat, B, C. Starting from that B, the seventh note, I skip C
to D. I skip E flat to F, I skip G to A flat, and there's our B
diminished seventh chord. In this case, B diminished seventh wants to
resolve to C minor. And listen to that
sound. It's so gorgeous. Very spooky, very
classical sounding. It's just an iconic sound. Now, by adding this extra skip, we are creating a
bit more tension. There's just this minor third, minor third, minor third. It's a very tense sort of sound. But what's cool about this
is as we start to invert it, it inverts into other
diminished chords. And we're going to
dive really deep into this in the
classes to follow, but I want to briefly mention
what this is all about. So if I have B diminished seventh and I put it
in first inversion, sure, we could call this B diminished seventh,
first inversion. However, this is also all
the notes that are needed. For D diminished seventh, D, up three semitones, up three semitones, up
three semitones. Same with F, and same
with the A flat. Basically, any of
the four notes in this diminished seventh chord could be a diminished
seventh chord. So B diminished seventh,
D diminished seventh, F diminished seventh, and
A flat diminished seventh. And even just
moving through them is a very iconic sort of sound. Check this out. Right? Like
from church organ music, we're going to hear this
climbing sort of tension. Also in, like, Halloween music, we hear that a lot as well. But there's one thing
I want to mention, which is that as we go
through these inversions, we are kind of
cheating a little bit. We talked about B
going up a skip, going up a skip,
going up a skip, and we get B diminished seventh. But D, if I go up
a skip and then up a skip and then up a skip,
I get a different chord. I get D minor seven flat five. F, if I go up a skip, up a skip, up a skip, I get F minus seven. And a flat, if I go up a skip, up a skip, up a skip, I get A flat major seven. So why is it that the B, when I move up skips, I get
a diminished seventh chord, but D F or A, the second note, the fourth note,
and the sixth note, I don't naturally get
these diminished chords. Well, it's because B
diminished seventh is sort of like the main diminished
seventh chord of C minor. And with small alterations, we can make D F or A flat
diminished chords, as well. So the big question is,
what is the alteration? It is simply just not
skipping one of the notes. D, up a skip, up a skip. And then just straight
to that next note. This is in the
harmonic minor scale, part of what makes
the scale unique. If I go up from C, it's
tone semitone, tone, tone, semitone, and then a tone and a half, a minor third. It's already in the scale, whereas it would not usually
be within a scale this distance of three semitones
or a minor third. So we're going to take
advantage of that and choose to not skip once we
hit this interval. We're just going to
simply move from the A flat to the B and
not skip over that B. So in this case, we
have D, up a skip, up a skip, and then straight to the next note of that scale. F, up a skip straight to
the next note, up a skip, A flat, straight
to the next note, up a skip, up a skip. So you can see if when we
hit this flat six to seven, so you can see that
when we hit this flat six to major seven, that natural minor
third that's happening, it's technically called
an augmented second, but it's all kind of the same thing for what we're
talking about. When you hit that area,
you don't want to skip to an additional note because you already have that minor third, augmented second,
three semitones, whatever we're calling it. So just something
to keep in mind. When I first started to play around with diminished harmony, I kind of recognize
that diminished seventh chord off the seventh scale degree happened
very naturally. But I couldn't find out why
when I inverted the chord, I got all these
diminished chords, but it's not naturally skipping
notes within the scale. There's a little bit of an adjustment based
on the fact that this scale has that unique
interval within it. So now that we've
talked a little bit about how the second, fourth, and the sixth note of a harmonic minor scale can give us two different
types of chords. It can give us a diminished
chord if we make sure to not skip
at certain points, and it can give us other
chords like major seventh, minus sevenths or half
diminished sevenths, aka minus seven
flat five chords. We have some options for substitutions with
diminished chords, and that's what we're
going to talk about. In the next class.
I'll see you there.
5. Diminished Substitutions: Let's get talking about
Diminished Substitutions. We're going to start by talking
in the minor environment where our diminished seventh
chord originally comes from, and then we'll talk a
little bit about how this also works in a
major environment. So in the last class, I talked about how we
very naturally get this B Diminished 7th Chords within our C harmonic
minor scale. And as we go up through
its inversions, we end up getting a total of four different diminished
chords that are available. Now, naturally, this B, if I go up a skip up
a skip up a skip is the only chord available starting on that
seventh scale degree. But if I start on the second scale degree, in other words, that second diminished chord
that's available, sure, on the second scale degree, the D diminished seventh, in this case, is available. But if I'm true to the key
and I go up skip skip, skip, I end up getting something called a minor seven flat five. This is another chord that's available as opposed to the
diminished seventh chord. If I go up to the
fourth scale degree, we talked about how F, in this case, F diminished
seventh is available. But also if I go up Skip
Skip I get F minus seven. And lastly, on the
sixth scale degree, the flat six to be specific, if I go up a skip, a skip, a skip, I get an A flat, major seven chord available. So let's say we extend
a chord progression, something like C
is our minor one, A flat, major seven,
F minus seven. D minor seven flat five, and then we're going
to play a G dominant seven before coming
back to C minor. First of all, if that
sounds confusing, I would say learn a
little bit more about the basic seventh
chords before you dive too far into
diminished harmony. But I don't want
you to feel like at this point in the
course, you're like, Oh, my God, it's going
to be so much of this type of harmony
moving forward. It's really not.
Think of it this way. On the first scale
degree, we have C minor, pretty easy PZ. On the sixth scale
degree, A flat, we're just going
up skip skip skip. Don't worry about
what it's called. It is called A flat major seven. If you don't know that,
something to learn on the side. And then we did
the same thing on the four chord and
the two chord. Again, two, four, and
six are important because when I take this diminished seventh cord
in its natural habitat, starting on the
seventh scale degree, as I invert it and pull out
those other diminished cords, they're built off of
scale degree two, four, and then this flat six, a flat, in this case. So I was just showing you as I'm going down through these cords, the natural cords that they want to be A flat major seven, F minor seven, D minor
seven flat five, we're going to start with
those as our starting point. And then to get back to one, I'm playing G major or
G dominant seven. It's a really classic sort
of move to take us back. To C minor. In fact, let's
go even more simple. Let's use the B diminished seven to take us
back to C minor. So we'd have C minor,
down a skip, down a skip, down a skip, down a skip, and then resolving back to C. Now, what's cool about
this is we can take any one of these chords
that are not diminished, not the first
chord, not C minor. So A flat, F or D, we can take any one
of those three notes and substitute them for
a diminished chord. So let's try this
out. We have C minor. Instead of A flat major seven, let's play A flat Diminished
seven to F minor. And then our D minus seven, flat five, B diminished
seven back to C minor. Next, we're going to try
it with instead of the A flat being substituted
for Diminished Chord, we'll try it on the F
minor. Did you hear it? So we had this A flat major
seven F Diminished seven, D minor seven flat five, B diminished seven to C minor. Now we're going
to try it instead of D minor seven flat five. We will try D diminished. And this sort of
move, by the way, you hear a lot in
Chopin's music. So a minor seven
flat five turning fully diminished or vice versa. It sets up different
harmonic movement and can kind of pivot around certain keys and
modulate in a fun way. Let's try it out C minor, A flat major seven,
F minus seven, all very natural
chords from our key. Here's our Diminished Chord
down to B diminished, and then back to C. You could also substitute
every one of them. C minor, A flat, Diminished seven
F, diminish seven, D, Dimini seven, B,
diminish seven. C minor. So the point here is
that if you're playing a chord progression in a minor
key and you have the two, four or flat six chord as its
sort of normal variation, like the A flat major seven, the F minor seven, or the D minor seven flat five, you can substitute
any one of them or potentially all of them
for Diminished 7th Chords. Now, this gets really
unique when you pull it into a
major environment. So first of all, if I'm
in C major, as we know, this A flat doesn't
really exist in the key, but we're still going
to work with it. That being said, where
you're going to find substitutions is more often going to be on the
two and the four. The B already gives us a diminished sound,
but in C major, we would have D minor or D minor seven if we
add an extra skip, and then on the
fourth scale degree, F major or F major seven
if we add an extra skip. A flat isn't really available, so for now, we're going
to gloss over that. But let's say I'm in C major. I'm going to play a basic
progression, two, five, what? Very common in jazz. We could even add some extra
skips, two, five, one. Now I can take the two and substitute it for a
Diminished Chord. 12, five, one, and same
with the four chord. So if we go one, four, five, one, let's try the four
as a Diminished Chord. One, four, five, one. Again, if you want
to hear this one to a diminished four
within a piece, check out Claire DLune It is the initial progression from
Debussy's Claire DLune. Tell me if you recognize this. Okay, so we have
this D flat major, and then G flat, Diminished seventh with some side stepping,
but there it is. And it's on the
fourth scale degree. So substituting the four chord for a diminished seventh chord. It's almost like diminished
harmony had been used so much in the minor environment
during the classical era that romantic composers decided to sort of turn it on its head a little bit and pull it even
more into major music. I'm not saying that diminished
harmony was not used in major music in
classical embarque music. Saying though, is that
romantic music really opened up the floodgates and
started using it a bit more. So those are some great
diminished substitutions to get you started with pulling Diminished
7th Chords into chord progressions to make
them sound more classical, more tense, and generally
more diminished. In the next two classes, we're going to start to talk
about octatonic scales, AKA, diminished scales. So in the next class,
we're going to talk about the whole half-diminished
scale. I'll see you there.
6. The Whole Half Diminished Scale: So we are going to talk about the whole half diminished scale, which is an octatonic scale. In other words, usually there's seven notes within a
major or a minor scale. An octatonic scale, oct
being eight is going to have eight individual notes
before it reaches its octave. And we arrive at these notes
by moving up a tone and then a semitone and
then a tone and then a semitone or whole step, half step, whole step,
half step, same idea. So that's the one we're
going to talk about first, where we move up a whole step and then a half step
and then repeat. Let's take a look
at how it sounds. We have C, up a
tone, up semitone, the tone up semitone, up a tone, up semitone, up a
tone, up semitone. And we end up getting one,
two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight different
individual notes. Now, for those of you that
know a melodic minor scale, sometimes called the
jazz minor scale, if you play one of these scales, and then take the fifth and substitute it as a flat
version and a sharp version, so we really don't have the
stability of that fifth. You're going to
play the scale with these two versions of the fifth. So C, D, E flat, F, and then instead of G, we get G flat G. A, B, C. It's kind of like a melodic minor scale with this sort of double
altered fifth. But ultimately, tone, semi tone, all the way up, that's
going to get you there. Now, if we start to extract
the basic harmony from this, we're going to get
a whole lot of diminished chords.
Check this out. So C up a skip in the scale, up a skip in the scale,
up a skip in the scale, gives us C diminished seventh. Of course, if I go
up an extra skip, I'm just back to
C. So we're going to ignore any extra
skips from there. So we have C diminished seven. Let's start on D. Up a skip up a skip up a skip D
diminished seven, E, up a skip up a
skip up a skip, E flat, diminished seven. And every single
chord will supply you a diminished or a
diminished seventh chord. Now, what's kind of cool
about this is if we take the first chord
C diminished seven, you'll notice that because
of this whole tone, semitone tone semitone approach, if we go through the
scale, we have C, which is a chord tone
from C diminished seven. We have D pulling up a
semitone to the E flat. F pulling up a
semitone to F sharp. G sharp pulling up
a semitone to A and B pulling up a semitone to C. So I sometimes like to think of these scales as
diminished chords, and everything is a semitone below wanting to
pull to those notes. Now, that's true if you're starting on the first
diminished chord. So we have a semitone pulling up into all of our main
diminished notes. Now, if I'm starting
my diminished chord on the second scale degree, now we have our semitones above each of these
nodes, right? So D E flat F F sharp, right? So now we would pull
down into each of these. So what it's showing you is that if you consider what sort of diminished scale you're in or where your diminished
chord is situated, you can do these semitone
pulls into the notes. Quite honestly,
you could probably do them from above or below, not even thinking about context because you're already in
an environment of tension. So we have something like
C diminished seven, right? But you could also try something like and they both sound fine, and they actually
end up giving you these diminished or
octatonic scales. So where do we end up using this whole half diminished
scale when we're improvising? Well, you use it on
a diminished chord. If you're seeing in a piece of music a C diminished
seventh chord, try using this C, whole half diminished scale. That's the scale you would try out if you're
improvising or creating a melody in that moment of seeing a fully diminished
seventh chord. So we've talked
about how you can go through every single note of a diminished scale and pull out diminished seventh or
regular diminished chords. And you can also start to
approach diminished chords by these semitone sidesteps based on the notes that we
get from these scales. Now, there is other
harmony that we can extract out of these scales.
It gets very complex. We're going to
start to dive into that more later
within the course, but in our next class,
we're going to talk about the half whole diminished
scale, and I'll see you there.
7. The Half Whole Diminished Scale: Alright, so now
we're talking about the half whole diminished scale. So the half hole
diminished scale, you could probably already guess works a lot like the whole half, but this time we're
going up a semitone first and then a tone, or in other words, half step, whole step, half
step, whole step. So on C, it looks
something like this. C, C sharp, D sharp, E, F sharp, G, A, B flat, and
then we're back to C. It's a very fun
sounding scale. It's even used in the
Simpsons theme song. Tell me if you recognize this. Right? So into that
second section, Danny Elfman was
using this scale as a sort of modulator.
But I digress. I just wanted to show
you that you've heard this scale before
somewhere most likely. But just like our last scale, if I go up through every single
note and I go up a skip, a skip, a skip, I get a
diminished seventh chord. Skip, skip skip, I get a
diminished seventh chord. So, again, this scale is
going to pull out tons of diminished seventh shapes from every single note
within that scale. But in this case, our home based diminished seventh chord,
C diminished seven, in this case, is going
to have semitone approach notes above each of
the notes within that chord. It's fun if you start to sort of play through these
but not consecutive. So instead of playing the C, the E flat, the F sharp, the A, something like C F
sharp, E A, right? It's a fun little
thing you can try if you're improvising
or wanting to sort of twist and turn a sound around this diminished sound. So where do we end up using this diminished scale when we're improvising or
creating melodies? This time, it's not going to be on a diminished
seventh chord. In fact, you would
try this over top of a dominant seventh chord with a flat nine. Allow
me to explain. If I'm in C minor, and I'm going through all the different three note chords that are available. Let's say it's harmonic minor, so we have a B natural. On the fifth chord, I
get a G dominant chord. And if I continue to go
up and an extra skip, I end up getting a G dominant seventh and then a G
dominant seven, flat nine. Flat nine basically
is telling me that I've gone up an octave, right? There's our octave eight. If I go up a tone,
that's a nine. So if we flatten it from
there, in other words, up a semitone from the
octave, that's a flat nine. So here is G dominant
seven flat nine. If I take out the G, I end up getting a B diminished seven chord
on these top notes. And if you think about
it, from B to C, our home key is C, that's
a semitone to Sart. And a tone to D and then
a semitone to E flat, and then a tone to F.
So right off the bat, this is telling us that
the whole half is going to be the better scale to
use in this environment. Now, you could also try this
half hole diminished scale over a regular dominant chord, but it'll sound even more
convincing if you're doing it over a dominant seven flat
nine. So here's the sound. Let's say I have
C dominant seven. I'm not going to play the
flat nine for now because I'm not going to
rework the voicing, but C dominant seven. He was in C major or C
Lydian, technically. And then once he
played this scale, it functioned kind of like
a dominant seventh chord, and it would take
him down to F. Also, really feel free to
play around with all the diminished
shapes available. I talked about how
every single note from that scale can be a diminished seventh chord or a
diminished chord. So you could try something
like lineating all of the diminished chords
available within that key it could give
you some fun runs, whether you're a horn
player or just wanting to play something fun and
flashy on the keys. So there it is the half
whole diminished scale in terms of how you
find the notes, how it functions,
where you can use it to improvise, or
create melodies. So that's it for this
class. In our next class, we're going to talk
about other ways of extracting harmony
from this scale. Things are going to
get pretty cinematic. I'll see you there.
8. Extracting Harmony From Half Whole Diminished: And Alright, we're about to get some pretty cinematic sounds using the half whole
diminished scale and extracting harmony
while sort of doing some small adjustments to
what we talked about before, before we were only
getting diminished chords, but no different than the substitutions we
talked about earlier, we can make some
small adjustments within which notes we choose from the scale to also get
some other chords available. Allow me to explain. We
talked about how the C, half hole diminished
scale ends up giving us a bunch of diminished
seventh chords that we can pull out of that scale. But let's go through
a little bit slower. If I go from C up a skip
and then up a skip again. Just as a three note chord, we get a diminished chord. But what if I pulled
that top note? Instead of skipping a note,
I go up one extra note. Now I have a C minor chord. I could do the same
thing, but instead of on the top of the chord, skipping an extra note,
I could start that way. In other words, C,
skip a note plus one, and then skip a note. I have access to
a C major chord. And you'll notice
I'm not playing any notes outside of that scale. C diminished is available
based on this set of notes. C minor is available based
on this set of notes, and C major is available
based on this set of notes. So for this first
note of the scale, if we're focused on
minor chords to start, I would go skip and
then skip two notes, and I get my C minor chord. Now the next note of
the scale, C sharp, if I go skip and then I
skip two notes again, I actually get a major
chord in first inversion. However, if I go skip
two and then skip one, I get a minor chord
in second inversion. So in other words,
if you wanted to extract only the minor
chords from this scale, you would end up
getting C minor, and then on the next note, C sharp, you get a
second inversion of some chord like
F sharp minor. The next chord is going
to be E flat minor. As we're moving up higher,
we end up getting A minor, F sharp minor, C minor, A minor, E flat minor, and then back to C minor. Every second chord
was root position. So the diminished
chord that we outlined the main diminished chord
gives us all minor chords. And we hear this
a lot in cinema, like the old X Men movies, for example, use this
progression quite a bit. It sounds something
like C minor, E flat minor, F sharp
minor, A minor, and back to C. But if
you wanted to fill in the chords in between those chords using
that diminished scale, you end up getting some
chords that are inverted. Again, C minor. If I wanted C sharp minor, I can't get that
because Skip a note. I'm pulling out G sharp, which is not from this scale. But again, if I was to go up
not one skip but two skips, and then up a skip, I get F sharp minor. I would just say, Take
your time with it. When I first learned
it, I was confused. I'm like, Okay, so we can have C diminished or C
minor or C major. And then there's all
these inversions. First, start off by
understanding that every chord within this
scale can be diminished. Second, the four main notes of that chord supply you
major or minor chords. So C minor, E flat
minor, F sharp minor, A minor or C major, E flat major, F sharp
major, A major. Now, we hadn't
mentioned that yet, but I kind of did, in a way. If you think about it, C up a skip up two skips
gives us C minor. Then we talked about how if
I go from the start up two skips and then up one
Skip I get C major. The same way C minor is
available, C major is available. The same way E flat
minor is available. If I go up one skip then two, E flat major is available if
I go up two skips then one. All of the notes from that main diminished
seventh chord can supply minor sounds
or major sounds. Once you understand that,
that's half the battle. You end up getting inversions
when you're playing around with the notes that are not the main diminished
seventh chord. So we have C diminished
seven, but this next chord, C Sharp diminished seven is going to give
us the inversions. A great way to
demonstrate this is to move through the scale. Using only the minor chords
or only the major chords, you're going to get some
root positions and you're going to get some inversions.
Think of it this way. We start with C major. I have these big
Cs on the outside, and these outside
notes are going to run through the scale. I need to fill things in between so that we
have this major chord. Next note is C sharp, which is in our F major chord. Remember, we only have C major, E flat major F sharp major
and A major available. So again, C major,
F sharp major. E flat major A major. F sharp major C major, A major E flat major, and then back to C. It
gives us a root position. It gives us a second inversion based on this bottom base
note, root position. Second inversion, root position, second inversion, root position, second inversion, root position. If you're a cinematic
composer and you have some sort of run going through
these diminished scales, you understand how you could supply a particular
sound in the harmony. It also works the same
way for the minor chords. You would have C
minor root position, F sharp minor second inversion, E flat minor, A minor
second inversion, F sharp minor root position, C minor second inversion. A minor root position, E flat minor second inversion, and then back to C minor. So whether you're
taking the notes from this initial diminished
seventh chord and pulling out all the minor chords
or all the major chords, that's a great way
to get used to this. And then if you're
wondering, how do I fill out the full scale? That's where inversions of these chords are also
going to be very handy. So we had this C sharp
major with C in the base, and then the C sharp base note gave us F sharp major chord. Now, we could also have this D sharp coming up next or E flat. We get a E flat major
root position chord. What's a tritone away
from E flat. It's A. So this E supplies
our A major chord. So it keeps doing these
sort of tritone jumps, which is part of
the reason you get this very cinematic sound. Tritone jumps
within progressions get used all the time in cinema. So another approach to this is if we're starting on C major, and I'm moving up a semitone to my next note in this scale, it doesn't only
supply F sharp major. There's another major
chord available to us currently that
also has a C sharp, and it is the A major chord. So now we're thinking
of the harmony being sort of down
a minor third. So C major, A major
first inversion. Instead of second inversion, F sharp, we get a
first inversion, A. E flat major, first inversion
C. F sharp major, first inversion E flat. A major, first inversion
F sharp major, and then back to C. So we
can think of the harmony as these sort of tritone
jumps or minor third jumps. But ultimately, at some point, you can also start to mix up
the major and minor chords. You're not bound to
only play major chords. You can go through this scale
mixing it as well, too. Let's say we have C
major to F sharp minor. E flat major to A minor. So you can really start
to play around with this, but I promise you it will always give you a very cinematic sound, a sort of contemporary
orchestral sound. And if you want to really
dive deep into listening to some music that uses
this sound quite a bit, I would say check out
Mahler and Holst. They're going to be a
great place to start to hear this diminished
harmony and to hear just how much it
influenced one of our favorite composers
today, John Williams. So that's it for extracting harmony from this half
whole diminished scale. The next class is still going
to be pretty theoretical, but we're going to take it
down a little bit, to me, this is probably the
most complex version of understanding
diminished harmony, but I wanted to make
sure that I didn't put it as the last class so
you're left confused. Let's start to wind
things down slowly. I'll catch you in the next class where
we're going to talk about diminished chord resolutions.
I'll see you there.
9. Diminished Chord Resolutions: Let's get talking about
diminished chord resolutions. If we're back in our C
harmonic minor environment, we talked about how we have access to this B
diminished seventh chord, and it wants to pull up
a semitone to C minor. We've also talked about how
this works in the major key. So B diminished seven with
this note that's out of key, but we're still going to
allow ourselves to play. It can pull to C major. So safe to say a
diminished chord tends to want to pull up a semitone to a minor chord or as a secondary
option, a major chord. But if B diminished seventh gives us D
diminished seventh, F diminished seventh, and
a flat diminished seventh, then couldn't we say that any of those diminished chords could also pull up a semitone to
a minor or a major chord? After all, D diminished seventh is still a
diminished seventh chord, and aren't they supposed
to pull up one semitone? Well, let's take a
look at what all these resolutions
might look like. So D diminished seven can
pull up one semitone to E flat minor or E flat major. What's cool about E
flat major is that it's actually the relative
major key of C minor. So that two chord, D
diminished seven pulling up to E flat major is a
great example of where a diminished chord would want to pull to that major sound. So D diminished seven pulls up a semitone to either
of those options. F diminished seven, the next
diminished seventh chord within this set of diminished
chords that are available, pulls up to F sharp
minor or F sharp major. Very distant keys from
our original C key. So we were in C major. Now we're using F
diminished seven to pull into F sharp major. That's a very distant key. No sharps, no flats
to six sharps. Is. And if we take the A flat, it's going to pull
up to either A minor or it's going to
pull up to a major. A minor might make
a little more sense because C minor our main key, the parallel key is C major, and the relative key
of C major is A minor. So it's kind of two steps
of thought to get there. But the main point here is
to make the connection that these diminished seventh
chords pull up one semitone. So when I'm in C minor, I have this B diminished
seventh chord, and it pulls me to C E
flat, F sharp, or A. Do you recognize those notes? From the last class, we talked about how the half
hole scale, C, in this case, half whole gives us C E flat, F sharp and A as
diminished chords, minor chords or major chords. It's the same roots
as the last class. This time we're just coming
at it from a different angle. So there's eight
possible resolutions. So B diminished
seven can pull us to C minor C major, E flat, minor, E flat major, F sharp minor, F sharp major or A minor and A major. But here's
the other thing. A major or minor chord can instantly turn
into a diminished. Because we've talked about
these ideas of substitutions. When I'm in C minor, we said that the A
flat major chord could be substituted
for A flat diminished, and the F minor chord could be substituted for F diminished. So when we were in C minor, we talked about how the
A flat major chord could be substituted for A
flat diminished seven, or the F minor chord could be substituted for F
diminished seven. So in other words, if I can play a flat major and
then on the spot, choose the substitution,
doesn't that mean I can change a major chord
to a diminished chord? And in the example of
C minor to F minor, one to four in the
key of C minor, I can substitute this F minor
for F diminished seven, doesn't that mean
that a minor chord could change into a
diminished chord on the spot? The important thing here is
to understand its function. So if I'm in C
major and I all of a sudden change this cord
to a C diminished seven, it's kind of acting
as that A flat did, the flat six now flat
six diminished seven. So I know this is getting pretty theoretical,
but bear with me here. C major, we change it
to C diminished seven. Now this is a flat six chord. Be a flat six of E. So I would
now make this cord five. So B dominant takes us
to E. So flat 65, one. So C major is our key. I want to move to E
minor so I can make this diminished flat 651. But also on a really simple
route I'm playing C major. I'm playing C diminished seven, T E flat can pull
up a semitone to E or D sharp pulls to E,
whatever you want to call them. But we have this note that is available to pull up a semitone. Like we talked about before, any of these four notes
can pull up one semitone. The important thing here
to note is that we've sort of changed flat 651, we changed this diminished chord very slightly to create
a dominant sound. This is why you're
taking this course. Diminished harmony is intense. And I'm only kind of
scratching the surface. Like, I mean, you can
really create a whole book. You can probably do a 400
page book on this stuff. I want to give you
the stuff that's quickly executable and stuff that you can
compartmentalize and learn really deeply. All of this stuff,
you should take one nugget and spend a week, two weeks, a month
on it to really, truly make it your own.
That's what I did. I would find one diminished
trick that a composer used. I would get obsessed with
it, just so you know, it was usually Chopin. I
would get obsessed with it. I would apply it so that as I'm improvising or as I'm composing, that trick is available
to me. Anyway, I digress. We talked about major
switching to diminished seven, and now it functions
as a flat six chord. Flat six, five, one could
take you to a new key. Do you remember when
we had a minor chord and changed it to a
diminished chord, what is this diminished
chord functioning as? Well we talked about how in C minor, it was the four chord. F minor, that can be changed
to F diminished seven. So when I'm playing
a C minor chord, let's say I'm in
the key of C minor. I'm playing my one
chord. I change it to a diminished
seventh chord. Now it's the four of
which key O G. So G up a fourth is C. So C is the four of G. So we could
play something like four, five, one to get to G minor. So I'm in C minor, C
diminished, D dominant. To G minor. See how
smooth that is? And again, if I look at
C diminished seventh, G is one of the keys that I
could pull up a semitone two. So I could simply go C minor, C diminished seven to G. But if you think of it
in context of C minor, C diminished seven is now
the four of which key, it's G. So let's throw a dominant chord to really
pull us there smoothly, or if you simply want to extend
the harmony a little bit. Switching on a dime to a diminished chord is
a little bit jarring, so I like to smooth
out the transition a little bit of where that
chord wants to take me. If a major chord can switch
to a diminished chord, and we can understand
why that makes sense, and a minor chord can switch
to a diminished chord, we can understand why
that makes sense, then the opposite
would be true as well. A diminished chord going to a major or a diminished
chord going to a minor chord makes sense because these are substitutions
we're thinking of. Remember, we were in C minor. A flat major was
the flat six chord, and I said we could
change that diminished. Who's to say we couldn't
go from C minor to a flat diminished first
and then to a flat major? There's an example of
where a diminished chord can pull to a major chord. It's also true for F minor. We could have instead of the one to a four and then the
four substitution. We could go from a one to the four substitution
and then to the four. Diminished chord, in
some cases could pull straight from
diminished to major or straight from
diminished to minor, if you're thinking
about them in context. When we're going from
diminished to a major sound, it functions as a flat
six of a minor key, and when we're going from
diminished to minor, it's functioning as the
four from a minor key. So when we were talking about this B diminished seventh chord, resolving to C minor C major, E flat minor E flat major, F sharp minor F sharp
major and A minor A major, it can also resolve to
a B minor or a B major. But from there, it wants
to move somewhere. So we have B diminished
seven to B minor, this is a four chord of F
sharp, our next home key. So listen to this
sound B diminished. B minor, four, five, one. We could try the flat six
where we go diminished to major flat six, five, one. But at the end of
the day, however you're thinking about
these sort of shifts, you're always pulling
into these same keys. Even when we were
going B diminished to B major or B
diminished to B minor, we were still pulling to one of those four destination keys. Remember I said B
diminished seven pulls up a semitone from any
one of those notes. It's like, no matter
what path you take, you always end up
resolving to one of those four keys
major or minor. So to summarize, if you take
anything out of this class, here it is. Easy PZ. A diminished seventh
chord can pull up a semitone from any one of these notes to a major
or a minor chord, or it can shift, so B diminished seven could
be a B minor or a B major. You just have to
understand how it wants to function from that
moment forward. Like I said in the last class, this class is a
little bit easier, theoretically, I think, but by a very small margin, right? These are two pretty
dense classes. We're going to sort of
extend this topic into the next class and talk about
diminished modulations. It kind of happened
organically within this class. Again, this is why I wanted to compartmentalize
this course into more mini classes
because it's easy to have this
information bleed over. But when I was talking
about all the ways that these diminished
chords want to resolve, they are effectively modulating. I'm going to explain that term a little bit more
in the next class, as well as dive a
little bit deeper into these modulations.
I'll see you there.
10. Diminished Modulations: So let's get talking about
diminished modulations. In the last class, we talked about where these diminished
chords want to pull to. Any note from a diminished
seventh chord can pull up a semiton to a major
or a minor chord, or the root can change from a diminished to a minor or
diminished to a major. You just have to
understand how it wants to function from that
point forward. That was all covered
in the last class. But now let's talk a little bit about what a modulation is. Imagine you're
playing a symphony. You're Beethoven, you've created the symphony and you
start it in C major. How long can you play in C Major before it
gets kind of boring, before your audience wants to hear a little twist and turn. It's like a story line. You have to throw these
pivots into stories. If it's happy, make it sad
or spooky all of a sudden. After all, some of the
best horror movies have some great comedic
moments in them so that it's juxtapose before
that next jump scare. Modulations allow
you to sort of twist the harmony to take you
to a new destination. So I'm starting my
symphony in C major, but maybe a section
later on is in G minor, and that continues for a while before I have a section
in E flat major, and then eventually I
come back to C major. Think of a modulation not
as a short rest stop, but rather totally
shifting into a new key for a while before eventually
moving somewhere else. Now, one of our best modulators are dominant seventh chords. These chords want to fall down a fifth to a new
major or minor key. If you're not familiar with
dominant seventh chords, they're major chords with
a tone below the octave. This is a flat seven or a
minor seven, and these chords, as mentioned, want to fall a fifth to either
minor or major. So C major, let's say I'm in the key of C major playing
a simple progression. Now I'm going to change this
one to a C dominant chord. That takes me to F,
let's say F major. Now it feels like
I'm in F major, and I could play in that key
for as long as I would like before potentially
returning back to C or going somewhere else. While diminished chords
work very similar. If you look at a
dominant seventh chord, you only have to change the
bottom note by a semitone up, and then you get a
diminished seventh chord. What's cool about
this is we talked about how C dominant
wants to fall a fifth to F. Once I've created this
diminished seventh chord, we've talked about how the
diminished seventh chord, any of these notes can
pull up a semitone. Well, look at that. E can
pull up a semitone to F, so it brings us into
the same destination. So you can do these moves like a dominant chord,
change it diminished, and still pull to that same destination that the dominant chord would
have wanted to go to. It's also true inversely, where you have a
diminished seventh chord, pull the bottom note
down a semitone, and then it drops a fifth to either a major or a
minor resolution. In the case of that example, C Sharp diminished seven, we know that C Sharp can pull
to D or E can pull to F, or G can pull to G sharp, or B flat can pull to B. Well, E to F was
one of our options. So let's say C Sharp
diminished seven, wants to take us to F. We can do C sharp diminished seven, drop the bottom note,
and then follow a fifth to F, the same. You might want to watch this
last section a few times, but the thing I'm
trying to show you is that dominant resolutions and diminished resolutions
are very interrelated. So their modulations of moving into a new key are also related. So here's where it gets
really crazy. Check this out. C diminished seven is the chord
we're going to work with. What are the four
main notes that we can resolve to from here?
I'll give you a second. Here's our four
notes. A semitone above any one of these notes. C can go to C sharp,
major or minor. D sharp can go to
E, major or minor, F sharp to G and A to
B flat, same idea. Now, if we change any one of these four
notes by a semitone, we can get four different
dominant seventh chords, and those chords
want to pull down a fifth to the
same destinations. What? That sounds crazy. Sounds complex.
Let's break it down. First, let's talk about this C sharp as our first
resolution point. C diminished seven can
pull to C sharp minor, and C diminished seven can
pull to C sharp major. But if I change one little note, I can access the dominant
chord for this destination. What's up a fifth from
C sharp or D flat? It's a flat. So check this out. If I take the top note of this diminished seventh chord
and lower it a semitone, I actually get a flat, dominant seven first inversion. So where would this take me down a fifth to C sharp or D flat? Again, major or
minor, your choice. So now we kind of have this diminished to a dominant
to a resolution. The next note that we
could resolve to is E. E up a fifth is B. So how can I change this shape to make it a B dominant seventh? Just lower the bottom
note down a semitone. So C diminished seven, B dominant seven to E. Whether you want to go
diminished straight to E, which works or extend
it a little bit, with a five to a one based
on these small movements, both are very much available. The next key available is G. If I lower the second
note by a semitone, I get D dominant seven. That is the five of G,
and it pulls me to G. The last destination up a
semitone from A is this B flat. If I lower the third
note, F sharp down to F, I get an F dominant
seventh chord, second inversion,
and that's going to resolve down to B flat. Again, minor or major
really it's your choice. So as an overview, in terms of modulating, we talked about how this C
diminished seventh chord wants to pull up a semitone to any one of these
other four keys, C sharp, E, G or B flat. But just using a diminished
chord to pull out of nowhere to those keys can
be a little bit jarring. I'll give you an example, C
minor, B diminished seven. Let's just move back and
forth between those. I'm in the key of C minor, and I'm going to play that
seventh chord available, which is B diminished seven. Now I'm going to pull it to one of the other available keys. B diminished seven
could pull to, for example, F sharp
F op semitone. Let's try that.
We're in C minor. C minor. Let's keep it going. Now we're going to
pull. Wow. It works, but it's, like, out of nowhere. So instead, you can take the
diminished seventh chord and prepare the dominant sound
to pull to that new key. Now we have C minor,
B diminished seven. C minor, B diminished seven. Let's lower the D
down a semitone. And then it pulls us into F sharp minor a little
bit more smoothly. From there, you can
stay in F Sharp Minor. You are fully modulated until you want to move to another key. So think of a main train track. And there's some other train tracks that are kind of spaced out a little bit farther out that your train can also fit in. But to get to those
other tracks, you have to move through
a track in between. So let's say you're
on track zero, and you want to
get to track two. You have to get through track one and then over to track two. You're in the key of C major. You're using a diminished chord to pull over to that
next train track. Essentially, that's kind of summarizing modulations
as a whole. That train track in between doesn't have to be a
diminished seventh chord, but this is a class
on diminished chord, so in this case, it is. It could be a dominant chord, it could be a minor six chord. Whatever it is, it then pulls
you to that next track. So if you're curious
about modulations and this is intriguing you and you want to learn a little bit more, I have a whole course on harmonic modulations. Feel
free to check it out. But if you're just here
for the diminished stuff, I think this class
summarized quite well how diminished
chords can be used to modulate and also
how they relate to dominant chords and how that can help us smooth out
those modulations. Now, I'll be honest, this was originally going
to be two classes. I was going to talk about simply how diminished chords can modulate up a semitone
to any of these keys. And another class was
going to talk about the relationship between diminished chords
and Dominic chords. But I think ultimately it made more sense to put these two together just because they're
so related to one another. As a result, if this felt like a bit of
a more dense class, it's 'cause it is two
sort of fused together. So make sure you're going
through this class a few extra times to help yourself
really digest this material. The next class is going to be much smaller and much easier. We've gone through most
of the dense theory at this point, in
the next class, we're going to talk
about how diminished seventh chords were used in classical and romantic
music and how we can take this harmonic concept and fuse it with our melodies.
I'll see you there.
11. Diminished in Late Classical & Romantic Harmony: Let's get talking about
diminished harmony in the late classical
and romantic eras. Now, there's a
specific trick that I have in mind that I
want to share with you that starts to connect
diminished harmony with melodies that also work well with that
diminished harmony. So if you recall, when we were in C minor
C harmonic minor, the seventh, second, fourth, and flat six scale degrees were the four notes that made
up our diminished chord. So what's kind of cool is if at any point you have one of these four notes in your melody, there's something
you can do with your diminished harmony to accommodate that melody
note. Allow me to explain. When we have in the left hand a fully diminished
seventh chord, taking either of these
middle notes, in this case, D or F and getting rid of it
and moving it up one octave, puts that note into the melody, and now we don't have it
doubled in the left hand. Usually, we don't want to have that note in the
harmony because you're going to get more intervals like tritones and just
more dissonance. So this way, we keep things
relatively dissonant, but we're just spreading
out the voicing in an appropriate way. So here's our four notes. Whether we're taking
F, up the octave or D, we will omit that note
from the left hand. Now, B and A flat
are also options, but you would start
to move through inversions of the
diminished chord. In other words, moving to the other diminished chords
that are available, D diminished F diminished
A flat diminished, which is the same as
B diminished seven, first inversion,
second inversion, third inversion, and you would extract one of the middle
notes from that chord. So now we could have the
F up here or the A flat. On the next chord, we
could have A flat, getting rid of it in
the left hand or B, getting rid of it
in the left hand. And lastly, we can have voice from the flat
six this time, the B or the D. So as you're going
through and playing a melody in a
harmonic minor key, if your melody note is
one of these four notes, try creating this diminished
chord in your left hand, omitting that note, and you'll find that
it just gives you more of that late classical
and romantic era sound. Let's say we have
something like 15, five, one. I'm going to go to the four. Allow me to explain. So
when I went to this four, I was playing B diminished
seven in my left hand, omitting scale degree four. So this was a substitute
for what I might have otherwise played
as a minor four chord. We talked about how
this four chord or the diminished version of that four chord is a
great substitution. But now I'm thinking
of this four chord, more so in an inversion
so that I can accommodate that melody note, the fourth scale degree. I'm still kind of I'm not really thinking B
diminished seven. I'm thinking F diminished
seven as a substitute chord, but again, getting rid of the F and putting it up
into the melody. There's another one there,
so we have this A flat, and I'm playing the
fully diminished seventh chord minus the A flat. And then, again, lots
of ones and fives to sort of accommodate testing
this environment out. Now, in a major key, you're not going to get that flat six, but you still will
get the seven, two, and four quite
often in your melodies. I'm not saying you'll
never get this flat six. If anything, you would think
of it as a sharp five, most likely in
something like an E major or E dominant chord, taking you, in this case, to
the relative minor, A minor. I digress. For now, I
would say, G sharp A flat, kind of leave it alone until you feel like you're ready to kind of buff things up a little bit from a basic starting point. But for now, keep it basic. So let's say we have a
melody that goes On this B, when I come down to it, I'm
going to play a B diminished seven chord situated in a way where B is one
of the middle notes. So inverting it. In this case, it looks like after
diminished seven. Again, this is all kind
of the same stuff, right? After diminish seven
is B diminished seven, second inversion, whatever
you want to call it. So we have this B in the melody, and then here's our diminished
chord omitting the B. So it ends up
sounding like this. What I love about
this sound is that you're also really close
to a minor six chord, one of my favorite
versions of a four chord. So you could have
something like major one to a diminished four and then the
four minus six, and then resolve
back to the one. There's lots of ways you can
start to play around with all these different modulations
and harmonic shifts. Again, though, what I
want to show you is that diminished chords are very
close to so many other shapes. We've talked about how they're
close to dominant shapes. They're also close
to minus six shapes. One of our classes
will cover more of these sort of
connected shapes, but I just wanted to mention that's another fun
thing you could try. So if you're in a
major key, whether your Mladeno is the seven,
the two, or the four, you can play around with
the diminished shapes and get rid of the seven, two or four from the
middle to accommodate this wider spread keeping the melody and the
harmony interrelated. That's the main thing I wanted
to cover in this class, the idea of omitting a
note from the chord, especially one of
the two middle notes and having that
as a melody note. Since your scale degrees
are always seven, two, four, and flat six, when you're working with the home key diminished
seventh chord, then your melody notes, when you have either
four of those, consider diminished harmony as an option to sort
of case that note. That's it for this
class. I'll catch you in the next one where we're going to talk about
diminished passing chords. I'll see you there.
12. Diminished Passing Chords: Let's get talking about
diminished passing chords. This class is a
little bit easier. Again, we're going to
connect things to dominant sevens dominant and
diminished are very related. But I mentioned a while back that you can
think of harmony, like the body of a song, and diminished would
be all the veins and nerves running between
the main muscle tissue. Here's a great example of that. If I play through all of the
chords available in C major, I haven't touched any
of these black notes. So what if I did want to play a chord on one of
those black notes? A great option would be a diminished chord or even
fully diminished seventh. Let's check it out. C major, C Sharp diminished seventh. D minor. D sharp, diminished seven, E minor, which is beside F major. You could even if you want,
you could jump to F major, but you could even switch it E diminished to pull it up to F, F sharp diminished, pulls to G, G sharp diminished,
pulls to A minor. This one's a bit odd.
B flat diminished, pulls us up to the either B diminished or B minus
seven, flat five, which then takes us back to
C. So there's this sense of prolonged tension
when you start to reach this sort of
seventh scale degree. But this part and this part and this part and this part and
this part all sound great. So for now, I would
say, avoid the flat seven and the
seven until you've mastered the lower part of this scale and all of those
diminished passing chords. These are ultimately
chromatic passing chords. There are notes
that are a semitone in between other
important chords. We're moving things
by semitones, and in between those
important diatonic chords, the ones true to the key, we're playing diminished
seventh chords. Now, what's interesting
is I've played C major, and then I've played C
Sharp diminished seven. Where does C Sharp
diminished seven want to go? It wants to go up a semi tone. So that's why it's
able to pull us up each time in a way
that sounds resolved. If you wanted to
get adventurous, you could play
something like C major, C diminished seven
to D major and sort of do these little twists and turns because ultimately, a diminished seventh
chord can pull up to a minor chord or
to a major chord. So you can do these
fun little switch ups. Diminished chords
really do offer a lot of sort of modulations, switching keys,
changing the tonality. So feel free to play
around with it a bit. Now, I mentioned that these also relate to dominant
seventh chords. C Sharp, diminished
seven wants to go to D minor or some
sort of Dcord, right? But again, if we just
alter one of these notes, the top note down a semitone, you can see, have A dominant
seven in first inversion. Where does A dominant
seven want to go? Dominant tend to want to fall a fifth, in
this case, to D, so you can have this diminished, resolve one note down,
and then pull up. Diminished, resolve one note
down, and then pull up. Diminished, top
note down, pull up. And you can try that
as little extensions on each of these
diminished passing chords. Another thing you can try is
keeping it fully diminished. In your left hand,
you're going to play something like
C major to start, C sharp fully diminished. Now drop the left hand to A. While keeping this fully
diminished seventh chord, what you have here is an A
dominant seven flat nine. A flat nine is just
a fun color to add. It tends to want to resolve to a minor sound, but
it does not have to. So now we have A dominant
seven flat nine. A dominant seven falls to D, so then you go to D minor. It ends up sounding
like C major, C sharp diminished seven, a seven flat nine to D minor. D sharp diminished seven, B seven, flat nine. To E minor, E diminished seven, C seven flat nine to F major, F sharp diminished seven, D seven flat nine, to G major. G sharp diminished seven, D seven flat nine, to A minor. And then it gets
kind of squirrely up in the top, like
I had mentioned. But you can see there's those two ways that you
can play around with connecting the diminished
sound to the dominant. Step one is really
just every single note in between the cracks
of your scale, you would play as a
diminished chord. Again, the third scale degree, you can choose to go
from E minor to F major or extend that diminished
sound to pull up to F major. From there, you can try
these little shifts. Top note down a
semitone gives you the dominant sound
before the resolution. Can try changing the base
note so that it falls to the note that completes the dominant sound before resolving. But again, it resolves
to the same spot. So that's it for this class
diminished passing chords. There's tons of dominant alterations that we were
playing around with, but start with the basics
and expand from there. If you're ever not
sure what chord to play in between the cracks of the notes that
are in your scale, try either diminished chords or some of these dominant
tricks that I've given you.
13. Minor 7 Flat 5 Chords: Now, I want to do a small class outlining the minor
seven flat five chord, AKA, the half diminished chord. When we're in a major
key and we're moving up through all these
four note chords, we end up getting on the
seventh scale degree, a minor seven flat five or
half diminished seven chord. What these are is
they look a lot like a minor chord with a
tone below the octave. This is a minor seven chord. But then we take the fifth, in this case, half sharp
and we flatten it. We lower it one semitone. Whether it's to
white or to black, doesn't matter,
down one semitone. Now we have a minor
seven flat five. As I mentioned, it's also
called a half diminished seven chord because it is diminished on the
bottom three notes, but having a minor seventh, a tone below the octave, as opposed to a
diminished seven, which is a minor third
or three semitones below the octave, it's
not fully diminished. It's diminished
with a minor seven, so half diminished seven, which looks like a degrees
sine and a slash through it, little tiny circle
diagonal slash. Now you can also find this chord in the natural minor scale. If I'm going through
A natural minor, also all whites, it
was the second chord. So we can think of this as
the seventh chord of C major, or we can think of it
as the second chord of A natural minor. You're more often to see it functioning as the
two in a minor key. This especially gets
reinforced in jazz harmony, where 25, one is the
main progression. So in C major, we would
have D minor seven, G dominant seven, C major seven, two, five, one, four note chords built off of the
second scale degree, fifth scale degree, and
the first scale degree. In A minor, we get something very similar
with a small change. B minus seven flat
five is our two. E minus seven is our five. We're going to change it to
E dominant seven and steal a note from the
harmonic minor scale, in this case, the G sharp. So we had two minus
seven flat five, five, dominant seven,
one A minor seven. The five in both
cases was dominant. In A minor, it was
an E dominant seven. In C major, it was
a G dominant seven, but everything else had some
small changes throughout. Now, in the major key,
this seven chord, the B minor seven flat
five doesn't pull up to C major as well as a fully
diminished seven chord. It just has to do
with all these notes and the way they
want to resolve. If you think about this A, it resolves to this
G in the C chord, but this A flat
resolving to the G, has a little bit more
tension resolution. I think of these
semitone resolutions versus tone resolutions
as magnetic attraction. If there is a magnet and I
place a needle over here and it's vibrating a
little bit like it wants to move over,
you'll feel that tension. But what if I now
place the needle here? It's going to really snap
over to that magnet. So the way that these
notes want to move between cords is
really important. Semitons have a huge attraction when they're pulling from
one cord to the next. And take a look at this.
We have B going to C, that's a semitone
wanting to move. A flat going to G, that's a
semitone wanting to move. F going to E, that's a semitone
wanting to move, and this D sort of gets
split out a tone either way. There's a lot of semitones wanting to pull us
to that resolution. All this is to say the
seven chord, B minus seven, flat five does not
function as well as a fully diminished
seven chord in terms of resolving up a semitone
to that one chord. But in a minor key,
we're going to see a particular function
for this chord. Again, it's a two chord within
a 251 chord progression. So one thing we
could consider is if we're in a major key
and I'm playing around. I mean, this would not
be a great progression, but let's say I'm moving
up through my cords. Once I reach this seventh chord, instead of resolving to C,
which would sound like this. Sounds fine, but you could
once you hit this chord, set up that 251 of A
minor. Check it out. That feels like it
functions better. So for now, what I would say is for the minor
seven flat five, think of it more as existing
within a minor environment. It doesn't doesn't
only exist there. But as a starting point,
you want to kind of oversaturate some
theoretical ideas until you're bored with them or
you just fully understand them and then kind of learn
their secondary functions. For me, I would say that the
minor seven flat five has more of a primary function
within a minor key. So that is the minor
seven flat five chord. The diminished scales don't work particularly well with it. If you're going to
use one, I would use the whole half
diminished scale, but there still is
some conflict as you reach into the upper
notes of that scale. Technically, you
would either play Locrian or Locrian Sharp two outside of the
context of this course, but I wanted to let
you know that if you're someone learning jazz piano or wanting to improvise or create a
melody over this sound, in short, when you're on that seventh scale
degree of C major, if you were to consider a scale, B to B, all white
notes, that is Locrian. You can also sharpen
the second note and move through this way. If you watch, we get
this tone semitone, tone semitone, tone, and this is where it
breaks, tone, tone. So the Locrian sharp two
tends to be a great sound, but you can also play around with the Lokean mode as well. Again, I was reluctant
to even mention this because I think it's out of
context, but there it is, if you want to improvise
over top of that chord, look more into those
scales. So that's it. For this class on the
minor seven flat five AKA, half diminished seventh chord, and how it functions
harmonically. I'll catch you where we
talk more about altering chords to and from diminished
shapes. I'll see you there.
14. Altering Chords TO or FROM Diminished: Alright, so I've already done some discussing about how we can change dominant chords to diminished shapes
and vice versa, but I wanted to have one class
that sort of consolidates this information and introduces a couple of other
chord shapes as well. Let's start with a
major seventh chord. Quite simply, if you take the bottom note and
raise it up a semitone, you get a diminished seventh
chord, and from there, you can choose to modulate in any of the ways that we've
previously discussed. So it's really common to see in romantic music and
late classical music, certain shapes, maybe
not so much major seven, but certain shapes
out of nowhere, just having a small change, creating some tension and
functioning as a modulator. So don't be afraid
if you're writing a song that has a
major seven chord, pull the bottom
note up a semitone and then play around with
modulations from there. Again, keep in mind this
wants to go to D minor most, but you can play around with a semitone above any
one of these notes. So you can go to D,
you can go to F, A flat, or C, major or minor. It depends on how jarring you want these
modulations to be, but no matter what, they'll
at least kind of work. Now, with a minor seven chord, you don't get to change
just one note by a semitone and find your way to a
diminished seventh shape. But if you do flatten the five, you get a minor seven flat five. We talked about this
chord in the last class. How does it like to function
as a two of a minor key. So from here, two, five, one of some new key. So let's say I'm
improvising in C minor, Now, I flatten the fifth. So that was a two, five, one of B flat when
I got to that spot. So in other words, you take your one chord,
which is a minus seven, and at some point
you just flatten the fifth and set up that new 251 modulating
you down one tone. Now, we've also talked about how a diminished seventh shape, if you flatten any
one of those notes, you're going to get a
dominant seven shape most likely in some
sort of inversion, one of them will be
a root position. So C diminished seven wants
to go to the keys C sharp, up a semitone from the C, E, up a semitone from
the D sharp, G, up a semitone from the F sharp, and B flat up a
semitone from the A. But if I make any of
those small changes of lowering one of these
nodes to semitone, again, I will access some sort
of dominant seven shape, which will want to
follow a fifth to these same destinations.
Let's check it out. C diminished seven,
lower the bottom note, which is B dominant
takes us to E, one of the four options we had. So C diminish seven, B dominant seven, E minor. C diminished seven, D
dominant seven, to G minor. One of our other options. C diminish seven to F seven or F dominant seven
to B flat minor. C diminished seven to A flat, dominant seven,
to C sharp minor. So again, you can take any of these diminished seventh shapes, lower any of the notes
by one semitone, which will become
a dominant chord, which then wants
to fall a fifth. The four options you'll have are the same options
that you have for simply resolving the
diminished seven chords to where they want to move to. Now, the same way we can
take a minor seven shape and turn it into a
minus seven flat five. We can also take a
diminished seven shape, raise up the top note, and now it's a minor
seven flat five. How does it want to function? As a two chord in a minor key. So we have the C
diminished seven. Now we have C minor
seven flat five, F dominant to B flat, two, 51. Now, what's cool is sort of like the dominant
seven shapes. You can take any one
of the four notes from a diminished seven chord
and raise it up a semitone. And you'll get the
minor seven flat five. The easiest one
to see is when we take that top note
up a semitone. But watch what happens if
I pull C up a semitone. Now I have E flat, minus seven flat five, but it's in third inversion. This sets up 25, one of C sharp. So isn't it interesting
that this C sharp E, G, and B flat destinations for the diminished
seven resolutions are the same spots that you
would resolve to based on the dominant tricks and also based on these minor
seven flat five tricks. Same thing if I take the
second note up a semitone, I have F sharp, minus seven, flat five,
second inversion. There's our 25, one to E minor. Again, one of the
proper destinations of this diminished
seventh shape. Lastly, we're going to
take the third note F sharp and raise it a semitone. Now we have A minor seven
flat five first inversion. So we end up getting from this C diminished seventh shape a two, five, one of G minor. And then you can start to
dive even deeper because every minor seven
flat five chord is also a minor six
chord in disguise, and these function as fours. So at some point, the
spool of wool just gets fully unwound and everything starts to kind of
bleed into each other. Do you see why I say
diminished harmony sort of is the veins
and the nerves? It runs between everything, and it's like this
connective tissue that has so many ways of connecting our more basic
functions of harmony, like major chords and minor
chords as resolutions. So just keep in mind that
diminished shapes with a small change can become
major seven chords, minor seven flat five chords,
dominant seventh chords, with a couple of changes,
minor seven chords, and those chords can also very easily be changed
into diminished. It works both ways. So I'd recommend if
you're working on a song, try to play around with
some of this stuff. When I'm improvising,
I surprise myself sometimes that when I bust
out some of these tricks, I don't feel like
myself as a player. I feel like I'm listening
to someone else. I'm almost in awe in
the way that it sounds. Because, for example,
I really love Moonlight sonata by Beethoven, which uses tons of
diminished harmony. So for me, it has this
very connected root to me as a musician, but I never fully understood
the harmony until about the last five years when I started to dive deeper into it. So for me, it's still a
relatively fresh sound because there's so many new
ways that you can explore it. I'd recommend you do the
same. Keep it simple. You don't need to do the
most complex version of these alterations, but try switching
up some chords. I'll give you one last example. So let's say I'm in C major
and I have a basic 251, something kind of
jazzy sounding. Raise the bottom
note by a semitone. But instead of
moving to D minor, I'm going to move to F minor. Oh, kind of cinematic and a little bit jarring, but
it works because, again, this C Sharp diminished
seven chord, any one of these four
notes can resolve up a semitone to a
major or minor chord. So while C Sharp really
wants to go to D, it can also, for example, this E can pull us up to F, and you get some
really interesting shifts in your harmony. So that's it. On this course on altering chords to
or from diminished, I will catch you in the next
class where we're going to talk about unrelated
diminished chords. I'll see you there.
15. Unrelated Diminished Chords: Alright, this is kind of an extra little bonus mini class, but talking about unrelated
diminished harmony, here's the trick that
I sometimes use, and I think it
sounds pretty cool. So let's say we're in C major, and I turn my chord to C
diminished seven just to really kind of
create some tension and maybe possibly modulation. Now, I want you to jump to any other diminished seventh chord. And then maybe a different
one fully unrelated, and then resolve as you see fit. The idea here is that the diminished chord
sort of washes out the palette of whatever key you're in. So we're in C major. Now I'm not so sure
C diminished seven. So things are really washed
out right now in terms of where we're supposed to resolve.
There's lots of options. Let's move to another
diminished seven chord, maybe G, and then D
and then resolve. This is a classic case
of prolonged tension. Now, where I first
thought that I heard this was in Beethoven's
moonlight sonata. It turns out he was doing some kind of calculated
diminished chords. These are the exact
ones he used. I want to make sure
that I'm kind of giving some more fresh examples, but
it was something like this. And then he kind of has
at some point, like, a minor chord and then he's playing around with all these different
diminished shapes, and I remember thinking
in the moment, it just sounds like
random diminished chords, and it kind of works. He is thinking
about them in terms of how they function
within the harmony. But I started to play around
with that concept of, like, what if I just move
from a diminished chord to a completely different one? It kind of works cause
diminished is so tense. Think about the movie, everything
everywhere all at once. It is a completely
chaotic movie. You never know where
it's going to go next. So wherever they do
take you, you're like, Okay, I was kind of already
along for this ride. Anyway. You haven't
seen that movie, just consider a movie where
every scene just kind of keeps randomly taking
you to a new spot. You don't know
what's coming next. Diminished Harmony kind
of does that as well. And once you've done
two, for example, like F diminished seven
to G diminished seven, well, now the listeners
are already going, Okay, where are we
going from here? I can go to 1 million places, and then eventually takes you to some sort of a resolution. So this sort of mini
class was really just to tell you that if you're playing a
diminished chord, feel free to hop to another
one related or unrelated. You can probably get
away with about two of these diminished hops. In other words, three diminished
seventh chords in a row. Before you should
probably resolve it. This prolonged tension
can't go on forever. If it does, you're going for
a very particular sound, and you can't necessarily expect your audience to appreciate
it as much as you. After all, after
a lot of tension, as humans, we do love
a good resolution. So that's it for this class on unrelated diminished chords. In the next class,
I'm going to give you a diminished seventh chord
exercise. I'll see you there.
16. Diminished Chords Exercise: Alright, so here is
one of my favorite diminished seventh
chord exercises. If we go up through a
harmonic minor scale, three of the notes
accommodate the one chord. In other words, I'm
in C harmonic minor. Here is my C minor chord. So as I'm playing through
the scale, C, E flat, and G are accommodated by
this particular chord. All of the other notes,
the D, F, A flat, and B are covered in the related diminished
seventh chord, in this case, B
diminished seven. Now, there's two
ways that you can play through this exercise. The first way is going
to be left hand only. And this is sort of going
to warm you up into the full version
of the exercise. Left hand thumb is going to play up through the
harmonic minor scale, and the lower fingers
are going to complete either a diminished
seventh chord or a one chord in some
type of inversion. So C is my first note. That's in the C minor chord. So I am C minor first inversion
to keep the C on top. F diminished seven
gives us the D on top. C minor second inversion
gives us the E flat on top. A flat diminished
seven gives us the F, C root position gives us the G, B diminished seven
gives us the A flat. D diminished seven
gives us the B, and then C minor, we
have the C back on top. Without me talking,
it sounds like this. The second version
of this exercise, which is the full version, now your right hand
is going to be moving up through the scale, and your left hand is going
to accommodate that harmony. Whatever note you're
playing has to be the middle note of the chord that is
accommodated by that note. In other words, C is
accommodated by which chord? Well, the C minor
chord B diminished seven has no C. So we
have a C in the melody. Here is my C minor chord. But I want this C to be in
the middle of the chord. Which would be second inversion. From there, you're going
to omit that note. So here's that sound
of C in the melody, the C minor chord
in the harmony, accommodating this
middle note jumping up into the melody and
being omitted in the chord. We talked about doing this
with diminished chords, so we're also going to be doing that with our minor chord. So once you have
this first shape, your right hand is going to move up to the second
note in that scale. I'm going to move up to
a diminished chord next, A flat diminished seven and omit the D that's in the melody. E flat is my next note, C minor omitting the E flat. F is my next note. B diminished omitting the
F. G is my next note, C minor omitting the G.
A flat is my next note. We could go D or F
diminished seven omitting the A flat.
Next note is B. We could also stay on
the same shape and just flip which note is omitted, and then we're back to C, the same starting shape
that we had to begin with. Now, remember, the idea
that you can take in a diminished seventh
chord either one of these middle
notes and omit them and bring them up in
octave means that when you're playing the notes that relate
to the diminished shapes, you'll have two options. Right off the bat, we have this as our C minor starting point. In terms of this D, the
second note of the scale, sure, I can go to A flat
diminished seven and omit the D, but I could also
go to B diminished seven and omit the D. To me, the A flat makes more
sense just because it's a smaller movement
in that left hand. So you ultimately get
to make that decision, but I want you to try to
streamline things as much as possible in terms of your
voice leading. So that's it. That is two versions of the
diminished seven exercise. It really outlines that in
a harmonic minor scale, we're really working with
two fundamental chords, the minor one and the
diminished seventh chord built off the seventh scale
degree or second or fourth. Or flat six. So I hope that those numbers seven, two, four, and flat six are starting to really resonate
with you because you want to start to
associate them with the potential of
diminished harmony. As we've discussed before,
we have substitutions. We have lots of options. But certainly, if this is a
sound you want to explore, keep those numbers in mind. This is absolutely a course you're going to want to review. Many times, the material
is quite dense I want to thank you for being here on this diminished seventh
journey with me. Make sure that you're
applying this stuff within your playing,
within your compositions. Thank you one more time
for taking this course. I'll see you in the
outtro video and maybe in another
course down the line. Thanks again, and I'll catch
you in that outtro video.
17. Outro: Congratulations on finishing this course on
diminished harmony. As you can see now,
diminished harmony can go from quite basic
to quite complex. Whether you're simply hoping
to learn the shapes of diminished seventh chords
or better understand how to use a half diminished
seventh chord within a progression or even use diminished seventh
chords as modulators, there's a lot of
different layers of complexity in terms of how we can use these chords as
composers and performers. I feel as though this
course deserves a bit of an extra congratulations because this is one of the tougher ones. It really does start off kind of basic, but as you noticed, I kind of put my foot on the gas within this course because
diminished harmony, no matter what way you slice it, has a lot of use cases, and it's a very involved, deep, delicious sort of sound
that we can use within the palette of harmonic
exploration and options. All that is to say, this
course was kind of tough, so extra props to you
for getting through it. Now, don't forget to go back
to the class that outlines all the project details
for this course because I would love for you to
submit that so that I can give you some
feedback and also so that you can start to understand what area of diminished
harmony you like the most and how you can further explore diminished harmony
in that direction. Don't forget to practice the
material that I've provided. Again, I would love if my students practice a
little bit every day, but aim for five days and
see if that works for you. Take the material
that I've given you into whatever
private lessons you might be taking so that your teacher can help you
improve the material, but also give you
their own twist or understanding of
the material provided. So feel free to sift through the courses that I've created, see if any others
resonate with you, and then slowly improve those building blocks that'll help you stand out
as a musician. I hope you enjoyed this course, and I'll catch you
in the next one.
Josh Cook, A Sound Experience
