Help: Diminished chord???

Subject: Diminished chord???
From: WyoWoman
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 01:28 AM

Hi there, saddle pals. A queek question from Kansas:

I'm learning a new song and all is going well until I get to the notation for an "A dim" chord, which I recognize from my rusty, dusty, musty memory as a diminished chord. However, I go to my handy, dandy gig bag book of chords and lo, I find nothing resembing an A-diminished chord. So, what's a fledgling guitar player to do? How does one play an A-diminshed chord, and in the future, how do I discern how to play other diminished chords if the chord books don't give me this information?

Wondering in Kansas, which doesn't have quite the ring of Wondering in Wyoming, but still, I'm wondering,

WyoWoman

Subject: RE: Help: Diminished chord???
From: Anglo
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 01:37 AM

A diminished chord is made up with a series of minor thirds, so C dim, Eb dim, Gb dim and A dim are essentially the same chord. The simplest way is to take the top four strings of the guitar. Fret the 1st and 3rd strings at (say the 3rd fret) fret the 2nd and 4th one fret lower (then he grabbed her...) Slide up three frets (then he tied her to the railroad tracks...) Slide up three frets (and then...) Along came Jones.

Fine the diminished chord which has the note you want in it, and there you go. For an A dim, start on the 1st string 2nd fret, your 3rd string 2nd fret is your A. Slide up three frets (that's the minor third) your 1st string 5th fret is the A.

Of course there are other chord shapes on the inside strings, but that's a good way to start.

Subject: RE: Help: Diminished chord???
From: GUEST,Bruce O.
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 02:04 AM

If you're playing a 12 tone equal temeperament (12TET) instrument, there's a chord slide rule on my website. www.erols.com/olsonw

Subject: RE: Help: Diminished chord???
From: Gary T
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 09:30 AM

Ignoring inversions, it's as Anglo said: Adim=Cdim=Ebdim=Gbdim. The four notes in each of those chords are (surprise) A, C, Eb(D#), & Gb(F#). Likewise, Bbdim=Dbdim=Edim=Gdim, and their four notes are Bb(A#), Db(C#), E, & G. Same pattern for B, D, F, & Ab(G#).

Fret your treble E & G strings on the first fret, and play a four-string chord with the B & D strings open, and you have Fdim=Bdim=Abdim=Ddim. Slide the E & G string fingers up to the 2nd fret, and add the two remaining fingers to fret the B & D strings on the first fret, and you now have Adim=etc. Keep all four fingers in relation and slide it up a fret (E & G strings on 3rd fret, B & D strings on 2nd fret), and it's Bbdim=etc. Slide it up again and it's Fdim=etc. again, and so on. I'm away from my guitar and chord diagrams, but I believe the fingering is finger #1 (pointer) on the D string, #2/B, #3/G, #4/E. I hope that's clear (it's a lot plainer with a visual).

Subject: RE: Help: Diminished chord???
From: Mark Clark
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 10:13 AM

WW, Lot's of good advice here. You might want to bookmark this thread in your personal page for future reference.

For pictures of Adim7 (Adim) chords, use the Online Guitar Chord Dictionary hosted at the University of Virginia. In the dropdown boxes, choose "A" in the root box and "dim7" in the extension box then click "find chord." You will be presented with fourteen different fingerings for the chord you want. Click on each chord name in turn to see the chord diagram displayed at the bottom of the page. All you have to do is choose the position and voicing that best complements the arrangement you're working on.

I think the simplest way to think about dim7 chords is to remember that they are always a series of four notes each three half-steps above the previous one. A fifth note in the series would be an octave above the first. Since the interval between each adjacent pair of notes is always the same (a minor third) you can name the chord after any one of the notes it contains. In that sense, there are technically only three diminished chords each of which has four possible names. Those twelve names cover all the notes in the chromatic scale and therefore all the possible names.

Good luck,

      - Mark

Subject: RE: Help: Diminished chord???
From: Peter T.
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 11:35 AM

Hey, WW, did you see the article on Kansas Long-Grass Prairie in the NYT over the weekend? Sounded like a real Earth News kind of thing.... (of course the film crews got there early, so it wouldn't be a scoop or anything.) Up here we are wrestling with the same problem....
yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Help: Diminished chord???
From: M.Ted
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 02:54 PM

Here are a couple handy tricks when trying to figure out diminished chords--

First:when you see a Diminished chord, such as an Adim, you can often play the Seventh chord that falls a major third below(two whole steps) which would be F7--this is because, if you take the F out of an F7, it is an Adim--

Second,you can often just slide whatever chord fingering you are playing down a half-step and pluck the third and fifth notes in the chord--

Third, you can take your A fingering, and just move the third and fifth steps down a half--take this open A: 0-0-3-3-3-0 (each number is the fret you play, 0 is open, X is unplayed, Low E is the first, then A, etc) then change it to X-0-2-3-2-X.

Your A chord is A-C#-E, and you are just moving the C# down to C and the E down to D#--

Subject: RE: Help: Diminished chord???
From: GUEST,Cross eyed of fingered
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 03:08 PM

Play D7 the one at fret 2 then add on note F on the D string. This is a dimished chord, guess its F#Diminshed.

Neat thing about these images they repeat every 3 frets so this repeats at fret 5, ie it is the same chord again.

Now the inner strings also have different fingerings, but are a little more difficult to explain. In the older sense of 'modulated' one can fiddle with the C Mediant Modulated Chord at fret 3 and make a Diminished chord. If I remember correctly - no guitar here - one adds one new note and sharpens another.

Like all 'passage' chords there are many alternatives - you can often use a 7th instead of a diminshed for example.

Subject: RE: Help: Diminished chord???
From: WyoWoman
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 10:04 PM

I think we may have exceeded my grasp of guitarness. I just heard something inside my brain go fzzzzpppspttt. BUT... I am a smart person. I am undaunted. I will print this out and sit with my guitar in hand and sort it out. I know if one of you were sitting in front of me and could just show me the darned thing, I'd get it. I'll check out the website that shows the fingering as well -- that will surely untangle some of these little curlicues of confusion wrapping themselves 'round my cranium ...

Thank you for the information, despite my smart-assedness, and I WILL get this one, 'pon my word. OH ... but another question: Is Adim the same as Adim7? Or is that another chord entirely?

F'anks, ww

Subject: RE: Help: Diminished chord???
From: GUEST,joe
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 11:07 PM

play a D7 leaving your trigger finger free, ie. w/ friendly finger, bondage finger & pinky.

now place your left'st liberated pointer on the 1st fret of the D string. that's your chord.

keep your fickle flangees in that pattern on your well-strung neck & experiment up & down it. have fun.

Subject: RE: Help: Diminished chord???
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 16 Apr 01 - 11:19 PM

Yes, it's the same, WW. I tend to think of my chord theory on the piano rather than on the guitar (guess that's one reason I'm not that great a guitarist!). So if you take a garden-variety dominant 7th chord like your old friend G7, which is G-B-D-F, and then diminish the 3rd, 5th, and 7th, you'll end up with Gdim ( a/k/a Gdim7): G-Bb-Db-E. Or, contrariwise, if you just raisethe tonic and leave everything else the same, you'll get G#dim, which would more commonly follow G in standard swing/jazz progressions. (Try, for example, G-G#dim-Am7-D7.) I don't know if that helps or not.

And remember what happens when you mix a diminished chord with an augmented chord... (the solution is left as an exercise for the student)

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: Help: Diminished chord???
From: Mark Clark
Date: 17 Apr 01 - 12:59 AM

As Mark Cohen has said, in practice whenever you see Adim, for example, it really means Adim7. I think a college theory course might talk about a dim that is not a dim7 but it's never used. We had a thread about that once. You might also run across a reference to Aº which is a way of specifying dim7 chords that jazz musicians use quite a bit.

As for sitting in front of you, as much as I'd like that I doubt I can make it in time to do you any good. The next best thing is the Online Guitar Chord Dictionary link I provided above. That will give you graphical chord diagrams for just about any chord you want. It's "the next best thing to being there."

      - Mark

Subject: RE: Help: Diminished chord???
From: GUEST,me gain still cross eyed and fingered LOL
Date: 17 Apr 01 - 05:08 AM

Welll I sorta messed up thankyou for the correction it is indeed fret 1 on the D and not 3 as I have sinfully stated now yall can stone me -

As our great selection of knowledge on Muddie shows we can create some wild but simple ways to get from a G Maj to a Z Remarkabley Impossible to Finger chord but Ahem, thank you for explaining about the 7th and why they are like bits of Diminished chords or is that visa versa - awe well I am completely lost now.

Actauly it all comes down to the astonishing and amazing fact that Diminished Chords are made of Triad intervals. So A C and missing out a note or two F# - Bit of D 7th then the other end D#. Ummm errr confused - if not you should be - I am absolutely lost.

If one could play em with all the notes in on the Guitar then it would be simple but it is not, so I am getting ready to quit here -

From fret one open on the E bass string, G, A#, C#, E, G. Phew and so on ad infinitum. These are one variant of the 12 semitone Diminished Domain, should I be in a College - NO - Next there are the notes that are missing, like F same rule again G# and so on take three steps and stop. When we do F# and run that one out that is all she wrote and we have named all the notes in the Domain SOOOOO there are only three seperate and exclusive expressions of this image in any key. The Root, and it's lamentable shadows, the Root Augmented etc, and last the 2nd etc.

Best of luck

Subject: RE: Help: Diminished chord???
From: M.Ted
Date: 17 Apr 01 - 11:49 AM

I don't know if I should say this again or not, but if you just use the F7 chord where it asks for Adim, it will work. Sorry for trying to explain why and then confusing everyone.

Subject: RE: Help: Diminished chord???
From: GUEST,joe
Date: 17 Apr 01 - 08:13 PM

diminished & augmented chords are the only practical chords whose notes are evenly spaced in the scale, the former separated by a minor 3rd, the later a major 3rd. therefore, the root of the chord in either case can be any note there-in. begin with any note. go up 3 half steps & play that note. repeat. repeat. another repeat brings you to the octave of your starting note. this is 1 of 3 distinct diminished chords being named for any note in the chord that makes sence in the context of the key of you're song. all of this applies to the augmented chord but go up 4 half steps instead of 3, there are 4 distinct chords, & you only repeat twice to get to the octave. you have forced me to use paragraph form. if you are still confused i shall resort to capital letters @ the start of every sentence & check my spelling.

Subject: RE: Help: Diminished chord???
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 17 Apr 01 - 10:36 PM

As should be clear from some of the above, the answer to the question (for those too lazy to scroll back up, what do you get if you mix a diminished and an augmented chord?) is: a DEMENTED chord.

Mark

Subject: RE: Help: Diminished chord???
From: GUEST,joe
Date: 18 Apr 01 - 06:33 PM

(ruk, ruk;)

Subject: RE: Help: Diminished chord???
From: Justa Picker
Date: 18 Apr 01 - 06:49 PM

Here's a little trick I use for making diminished chords on the fly, as it relates to fingerpicking and keeping an alternating bass going.

A word of caution though. It involves the thumb!!!!!

I start with an alternate way to play a 7th chord.
For example, let's say I wanted to play a G7 (assuming the guitar is in standard tuning E-A-D-G-B-E.) My fingering for the G7 chord would be:

- index finger on the 4th string, 3rd fret
- middle finger on the 2nd string, 3rd fret
- ring finger or the 3rd string, 4th fret
...and the thumb frets the 6th string, at the 3rd fret...
So, you pick the thumb note first, and pluck only the other strings that you're fretting. (Ignore or mute the others.)

To go to the G# diminished, leave all your fingers where they are and simply move the thumb up to the 4th fret (6th string.)

Yeah, it's a bit of a stretch, but if those of you can make the infamous thumbed F chord, than this shouldn't be a major problem.

The above, is also a universal (alternate) position for 7th chords and diminshed chords up and down the neck. I use it a lot, and it sounds purdy good.