Diminished Chords

The diminished chord is made up of four notes. When compared to the major scale they are:

1^st, ^b3^rd, ^b5^th, and ^bb(double flat) 7^th

So once again if we look at the A major scale:

We find that ‘A diminished’ would be composed of the notes A (1^st), C (^b3^rd), E^b (^b5^th), and G^b (^bb7^th). The fingering would be:

Listen (root notes on 5^th fret):

The diminished chord has a unique property in that the root, ^b3rd, ^b5th and ^bb7th will share the same notes across those four keys, for example:

So one diminished chord can cover four keys, since it will contain exactly the same notes in each of those four keys. This is very useful when changing keys during a piece of music, and they are also used as transition chords to pass from one chord to another in a progression, and as a substitution for dominant 7^th chords.