(lively jazz music)
- I'm Adam Maness and you're listening to
the "You'll Hear It" podcast,
daily jazz advice coming at you.
Coming at you for day two of my solo week here.
At the piano, Peter's in Europe.
I'm here in St. Louis but I'm at the Steinway piano,
and this week I'm doing
a sort of basic jazz theory series here
called How Does That Work?
You know, like yesterday was altered dominants.
Today I'm going to be talking about diminished chords
and how we often use them in jazz.
There's a few different ways you can use a diminished chord
but first let's define what a diminished chord is.
If we start on C, a diminished chord
is built on minor thirds, so we have C, E-flat,
G-flat, and A-natural.
(piano notes)
So this chord is built around, at least in jazz,
most of the time it's built around the diminished scale.
(piano notes)
For a straight-up diminished chord,
it's built around the whole-half diminished scale,
so we go in a series of whole-steps,
C to D, half-step D to E-flat, and then so on,
whole step, half step, whole step.
So E-flat, F, F-sharp,
G-sharp, A, B, C.
So if you skip a note,
(piano notes)
right, you get this C-diminished seven.
(piano notes)
Okay, so how do we use diminished chords in jazz?
Now, diminished chords are often used as a substitute
for a seventh chord.
It can be, say here we have our C-diminished seven.
This could be acting as a five-chord to D-flat major.
(piano notes)
You hear this all the time.
(piano notes)
All right, from the half-step below the diminished,
(piano notes)
or it could be going to B-flat minor.
(piano notes)
Essentially, these are used
as part of a dominant-seventh chord.
(piano notes)
It can really be used as a dominant-seventh flat-nine,
remember altered extensions from yesterday,
from any root note a half-step below
any of the notes in this seventh chord,
so wherever you would use a B-seven flat-nine,
(piano notes)
like, say to E-major,
(piano notes)
you could use one of these four
because it's symmetrical diminished chords.
So, C
(piano notes)
or A
(piano notes)
like, that's kind of how they function,
but mostly they go from the half-step below.
You might see them used there.
They're also used to substitute a tonic chord,
so if I'm landing on C, you see this all the time
where you would use a C-diminished
(piano notes)
to delay going into the C-major six nine.
(smooth piano melody)
You know, it happens on tunes like "Let's Get Lost"
and "What's New?"
You hear people do this all the time.
So, that's another way you can use that diminished chord.
And then, a final way we'll talk about today,
is again, is as another passing tone,
but this time instead of from below
as a seventh chord from above.
So, if we have a three, six, two, five,
(piano notes)
again, you can sub out
instead of A7, you can do E-flat diminished seven,
(piano notes)
to the D-minor seven, so three,
(piano notes)
and instead of six, E-flat diminished seven
(piano notes) two, five, one.
You see this all the time, especially on that three six sub.
(piano notes)
And you see it too
from the two up to the three (piano notes)
(smooth piano melody)
It's just a sound you hear a lot of in jazz.
It's how we use these diminished chords.
So, we have an option is to use it from below
(piano notes)
from above, like in the three, six, two, five
(piano notes)
and then as a substitute for the one.
(piano notes)
That's so beautiful.
So, how do we build voicings on diminished chords?
They way I've been playing 'em so far
is really kinda icky, right?
It's what you hear a lot of beginners play,
like they'll just do
(piano notes)
straight up, and they might even double it, which is gross.
(piano notes)
So, we noticed from our scale
(piano notes) our whole-half
that we actually have four other notes
in this octatonic scale
and all of those notes are in play,
and they're all one whole-step above
our C-diminished here, C, E-flat, G-flat, and A,
(piano notes)
and so at any time, we can take any of these notes
in our voicing, if we're gonna voice out a chord,
and sub it out with the note a whole-step above,
so even here,
this C-diminished seven (piano notes)
I can, instead of playing A,
(piano notes)
add that B
(smooth piano melody)
and it sounds great
(piano notes)
but it works with any of 'em.
(smooth piano melody)
Adds just a little bit of a clash there, you know?
(piano notes)
Any notes from this diminished chord
that you move up one whole-step sound great,
and for pianists, when we're doing two-handed voicings,
we can get some really lovely voicings out of this
just by using the other notes in the scale.
(piano notes)
It's called a double diminished, right?
So here I have C, A, (piano notes)
and E-flat in my left hand,
and that's from
(piano notes)
right, our original C-diminished chord,
and then I'm borrowing notes from those other four notes
in the scale,
A-flat, B, and F. (piano notes)
I could put D in there, too.
(piano notes)
Here's all of the notes, double diminished.
(piano notes)
Fully double diminished, (piano notes)
all the notes from the octatonic scale
(piano notes)
and it sounds awesome, so if we're doing,
again, our three, six, two, five
with subbing that E-flat diminished for the A7,
(piano notes)
we can do that exact voicing.
(piano notes)
How great is that?
(piano notes)
Again,
(piano notes)
E-flat, C,
(piano notes)
G-flat, and then, from the other scale,
B, D, F, A-flat. (piano notes)
(piano notes)
Right?
(piano notes)
I love that so much.
That sounds so good.
So that's just a very basic primer
of how we use diminished chords and scales in jazz.
There's a whole other philosophy of the diminished scale
with dominant chords, the half-whole
(piano notes)
we briefly touched upon yesterday,
but that's a whole other can of worms.
This is really just the pure diminished,
you know, the very basics behind it
and how we use it.
So that's it.
I'll be back tomorrow for some chord subs
How Does That Work, but until then, you'll hear it.
(lively jazz music)