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diminished chords

Play all 12 Diminished 7 Chords as Broken Chords and Chords on the Piano (2 hands - 2 Octaves ) By Greg Lloyd - FREE Sheet Music below

For me this exercise is a great “chops” builder, I still do it today. It is also a great way to learn what the 12 diminished 7th chords are while working on your technique at the same time.

So what is a diminished 7? A diminished 7 is a interval produced by narrowing a minor seventh by a chromatic semitone which is en-harmonically equivalent to a major sixth.

A good way to look at the diminished 7 chord is to think of it as all minor thirds. For example the C˚7 (Cdim7) chord the C to Eb is a minor 3rd, then Eb to Gb is a minor third and Gb to A is another minor third. The diminished 7th is a 6th.

Sometimes you see the diminished chord written with the double flat (bb) on the b7th note shown below:

dimished 7 with bb.6th.png

I like to make the - double flat - a 6th instead to make it easier to read and that is what is in this exercise below.

dimished 7 with 6th.png

Both ways of looking at it are of course correct as you get the same result.

The diminished 7th chord is a special chord as it can be more than one chord depending which note you start on within the chord. So C˚7 could be - C˚7, Eb°7, Gb°7 and A°7 as all these chords are made of the same notes! Db˚7, E˚7, G˚7 and Bb˚7 are all made from the same notes PLUS - D˚7, F˚7, Ab˚7 and B˚7 are…yes! You guessed it, all made up from the same notes!

So this exercise in the FREE PDF moves through these inversions/chords of the 3 diminished chords using C˚7, Db˚7 and D˚7 as a starting point. Have a look below…

c dim one bar only.png

If you move the above exercise up a half step (semi-tone) to Db you will get 4 more diminished chords.

Db dim one bar only.png

Then do the same exercise again up another half step to D and you will get the last 4 diminished chords.

D dim as one chord.png

Above are all 12 Diminished 7 chords as broken chords.

If you play the 4-notes under the diminished chord together you will get the Diminished 7 chord. How cool is that!

One last thing is that I have seen this chord written a few ways on chord charts:

  1. dim7

  2. ˚7

  3. sometimes only with the ˚

Later in future videos I am going to deep dive more into this topic and show you how to use these exercises in your playing on the piano so stay-tuned for that!

So for now check out the full exercise BELOW and GRAB all three C-Db-D diminished exercises on the FREE sheet music above now!

Grab this exercise in C - Db and D diminished above in FREE PDF.

Grab this exercise in C - Db and D diminished above in FREE PDF.

Take it easy,

Greg.

P.S. If you have a question or a topic you would like me to cover leave a comment below or email me at: greg@classicaltojazzpiano.com