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It's been a very long time since my last post, but I said I'd be looking at diminished chords.
Diminished Chords A bog standard plain diminished chord, is in reality nothing more than a standard minor chord triad (which as I've stated before has a scale spelling of 1, b3, 5) and flattening the 5th note as well. So going back to C you'd get. 1 = C b3 = Eb b5 = Gb So this would be called a C diminished chord. Half-Diminished or m7b5 chords So how do we make it a half-diminished chord. Well bizarrely a half-diminished chord is really a minor 7th chord (remember the scale spelling for that 1, b3, 5, b7) but with the 5th flattened also, so you get 1, b3, b5, b7. So again in C. 1 = C b3 = Eb b5 = Gb b7 = Bb So if you think about this as it's a minor 7th chord with a flattened 5th, it's become more popularly known as a minor 7 flat 5 (m7b5) chord and certainly in popular music you'll find more people who know it by that name, rather than half-diminished. Diminished 7th chords So how do you make a full diminished 7th chord. Pretty easily actually. All you need to do is take a half-diminished (m7b5) chord and flatten the 7th note AGAIN. Yes that's right again. So the scale spelling of a diminished 7th chord is 1, b3, b5, bb7. So again in C you get these notes. 1 = C b3 = Eb b5 = Gb b7 = Bbb (yes music theory caters for double flats so whilst it's actually the same note that we'd generally call A it's called Bbb).
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Been away for a while, very busy, lots of new students.
Ok so you've looked at the previous posts and you know that the C Major scale has the notes C D E F G A B and C in. You also know that it has a neutral key signature (i.e. no sharps or flats). But you now want to know which scales have which sharps or flats in the key signature and as part of the scale. Well there's two ways to do this. You can either memorise them all or, if you're like me, you can remember a logical way to figure it all out. So I'll give you the mechanism I use and the first couple of keys in each direction (sharp or flat) and leave you to work the rest out yourself (don't want to make it too easy). So, let's look at sharp keys first. You take the 5th note of the scale and use that as the starting note of the next scale (hence the term circle of fifths). Using C Major as an example you get. 1 = C 2 = D 3 = E 4 = F 5 = G So the new scale starts with a G, runs through the 8 notes back to G. The trick is that the 7th note of the new scale is sharpened by a semi tone, which gives you. 1 = G 2 = A 3 = B 4 = C 5 = D 6 = E 7 = F# (remember it has to be sharpened by a semi-tone or half-step) 8 = G So there is the scale of G Major which has one sharp (F#) as it's key signature. From the above then you can see that the next one (5th note in the key of G) is D which gives you. 1 = D 2 = E 3 = F# 4 = G 5 = A 6 = B 7 = C# (remember you have to sharpen the 7th note) 8 = D Ok over to you, I'm sure you can figure the rest out. Flat keys in the next post. |
| David May Guitar |
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