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Using Diminished 7th Chords As Transition Chords

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One Of The Wonderful Uses Of Diminished 7th Chords!

Good morning. This is Duane. Yesterday we looked at a kind of transition chord which I called a half step slide. In other words, when we’re moving from one chord to another, we approach that chord by sliding into it like a baseball runner sliding into second base instead of standing up when he lands on a second base. Much better chance of being safe. It’s the same in music. If you’re progressing, say, from C 7th to F, a good way to do it is to take the … To substitute the chord that is a half step above where you’re going. In other words if you’re going to F then you’d substitute some sort of F sharp chord, and so I demonstrated you could do it like that. You might want to go back and review that if you’re interested in that.

 
Today I’d like to take another kind of transition called diminished 7th chords. Let’s say we’re playing a song like America The Beautiful. Well that’s fine, but we can do better. Instead of playing just from C to G, we could do this. See that? That’s a transition chord. It’s a diminished 7th chord. A diminished 7th chord always has 4 notes in it, and each note is separated by a minor 3rd, so this diminished 7th chord would be, I guess we’d call it C sharp diminished. We could call it B flat diminished or E diminished or G diminished 7th, but I’ll call it C sharp diminished 7th since I’m going to use C sharp on the bottom as the root note.

 
That’s a C sharp diminished 7th chord and then we could go on to either G or, I like D minor 7th as a substitute. Then we get to G. Then we could use that as a transition chord again. See that? Let’s do it slowly. C, C sharp diminished now. We’re on D minor 7th. G. Now I’m going to use a transition chord. D minor 7th. D minor 7th. That’s a diminished 7th chord. It’s like G 7th except by using a flat 9th instead of the root, that’s a 4 note diminished 7th chord like that was a diminished 7th chord, right?

 
There’s actually only 3 different diminished 7th chords, did you know that? There’s that and that and that, and that’s all there is, because if you invert that, you get that, don’t you? It’s the same chord, it’s just upside down. See? There’s only 3 of them. That one, that one and that one, and of course they can be named any note of the chord. That could be C diminished 7th or E flat diminished 7th or F sharp diminished 7th or A diminished 7th. That could be C sharp diminished 7th or E diminished 7th or G diminished 7th or B flat diminished 7th. That could be D diminished 7th, F diminished 7th, A flat diminished 7th or B diminished 7th.

 
Then if you go up another half step you end up where you were, right? You’re just upside down. Okay, so back to the song. C sharp diminished. Now, right there, I’m going to use a half step slide like I taught yesterday. Hear that? I go from G quickly to D flat 7th, then slide down. Look at what that is. That’s a diminished 7th. I could use one there too, if I wanted to. Guess what that is. You’re moving from a C to D minor 7th, so you could go E flat diminished 7th. Now I’m going to use that half step slide. Now, F sharp diminished 7th. We’re moving between the F chord and the C chord, except I’m going to keep G in the bottom, so I’ll use F sharp diminished 7th as I come to C. Okay? So, diminished 7th chords are used as transition chords between chords, and it just makes it smoother as you move from one chord to another, so that’s 2 kinds of transition chords, the half step slide and the diminished 7th chord.

 
Okay, that’s it for today. If you enjoy this kind of thing, come on over to PlayPiano.com and sign up for our series of free videos and music theory stuff. I think you’ll enjoy, so we’ll see you there. Bye bye for now.

Click on this link to watch this video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3QmDDhRUNM&feature=youtu.be

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Here’s a great little book on chords and chord progressions on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Piano-Chords-Chord-Progressions-Exciting-ebook/dp/B0076OUGDE/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404158669&sr=1-1&keywords=piano+chords+duane+shinn

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About Duane

Duane Shinn (that would be me) has good news for you if you want to play the piano. He (me) has little fat hands & stubby little fingers - not at all suited for playing the piano - more suited to making mud pies or some such. I am also fairly uncoordinated with just average musical ability - certainly not a great piano player. But I've learned a ton about music over the years and people tell me I'm pretty decent at explaining how music works & how to progress more rapidly on the piano. Over the years I have developed about 150 techniques for conquering the piano. Most professional pianists can do these techniques, but very few can explain them in a way people can understand. I specialize in making complex techniques simple. I invite you to watch a few of my free videos and see some of these for yourself before making any decision about taking any of my courses.

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