Diminished Chords

[rayc]

Each key seems to have a Dim chord, whether it's 1/2, full augmented etc. & that's a part of the weirdness, yet they rarely appear in well established progressions or songs.
If they are essential to the key why aren't they used? If they aren't essential, and I know they're often difficult to name &/or play, what purpose is served other than another passing option?
I've been writing in A maj for a while & it has a G#dim. I can't get my fingers around that so I substitute a G#min often but I'm prone to substitutions becasue of my lack of chords under fingers as well as my odd ear.
Thoughts?

[vomitHatSteve]

As a punk songwriter, I've written a lot of songs where the 7th chord is just the same power chord I use everywhere else.

Very rarely have I ever used a proper diminished chord. Usually it's because I set out to do so rather than it sounding correct or natural. (My entry for JD's raga challenge used one for example)

That said odds are good that I occasionally include them in my sequencing because I'm not necessarily paying attention and Regdar plays to the key unless told otherwise.

[Greg_L]

As a punk songwriter, I've written a lot of songs where the 7th chord is just the same power chord I use everywhere else.

That ^^^^^

While I do usually alternate between the "proper" major and minor chords for a given key, I never concern myself with the diminished. Fuck that stupid thing. The 7th chord, if I use it at all, gets the non-binary gender fluid root/fifth/octave power chord. Works perfectly every time without fail.


Having said that, just learn different shapes of the same chord if your fingers don't like a certain position. There's always another way.

[JD01]

I barely every use it either. If I do, instead of a diminished chord I'll use the augmented vii chord. Just a root and a #5

[Lt. Bob]

lol .... it gets used in the music you guys dismiss ......
ya'll mostly are too good for say Steely Dan or jazz noodling and I base that on the many times I've heard ya'll denigrate that type of music ..... so if music that has more than power chords to it isn't on your radar then chords that are more than a biad wouldn't be that useful to ya'

[Greg_L]

ya'll mostly are too good for say Steely Dan

I don't know about the rest of these guys, but I am most definitely too good for Steely Dan.

[Lt. Bob]

ya'll mostly are too good for say Steely Dan

I don't know about the rest of these guys, but I am most definitely too good for Steely Dan.

that's what I'm saying!

[Armistice]

I don't use strict diminished much, if at all, but I do use diminished 7ths - at least that's what I think it is. Minor third, diminished 5th, diminished 7th.

Principally with the root on the A string, so A#, B, C, C# and up.

Here's one in the wild at 0:10 -



So it's a C#dim7 - X4545X - dead easy to play.

A cool thing to do with that chord is to play it anywhere, then go up three frets with the same shape and then go up three more frets with the same shape... I do that on RDY, from memory, from the first Armistice album.

I also regularly use Gmaj9, A mu major, the run up from Cmajor to D via A/C# and any number of other "weird" chords and sequences that I learnt at age 18 from my...

Screenshot 2022-12-10 071625.png

which is still one of my proudest possessions, albeit sitting in a drawer for years these days as I have them all internalised.

My entire guitar playing life, which you may have noticed is just a little different from most of what you all get up to when left to your own devices, is based on 2 main things - the Steely Dan Greatest Hits songbook and Television's Marquee Moon. How's that for a combo?

That and a little bit of Jimmy Page acoustically and also Jeff Martin from Tea Party along similar lines with alternate tunings.

I am an unashamed Steely Dan chord devotee.

[rayc]

You've probably heard in my songs that I'll use the letter of the chord and add min/7/maj as suits my playing. I'll try learning G#dim and suss out whether it works for me...I suppose I could hang on the dim to push up the need for resolution and then, do my usual, not resolve but that'd be thinking too far ahead of my hands.
I deliberately didn't mention "jazz" in the OP. The song book seems to be filled with former pop tunes that have had the chords augmented to near death in a ritual of apprentice attempting master works thing. Yet many jazzer bang on about "shell" chords and even dropping the root of shell chords so they are sketching the differences within an ensemble. Let's take C, make it a C7 then engineer a C7(b9,b13) {C Bb Ab, Db E} but drop evrything just keep Bb & Ab perhaps?
I like pretty chords but the closest I come to playing one is Am7 or, maybe, D sus 2.

[JD01]

I like Steely Dan and weird chords too.
They're effectively used in rock and punk more that you think.

When you have those power chord sequences with the sliding octave chord shape over the top, it's often picking out 6th and 7th of the chord.

[muttley]

I use them all the time. Great for substituting into many progressions instead of the standard V7 use a dim one semitone up. Diminished triads are just stacked minor thirds above the root. You can move them up or down by three semitones and the chord is repeated with a different inversion. The root almost becomes irrelevant. Lots of jazz throughout the last hundred years has made good use of them as a tension device and soloing device.

I'm not huge on Steely Dan though. Not since the early 80's.

[muttley]

lol .... it gets used in the music you guys dismiss ......
ya'll mostly are too good for say Steely Dan or jazz noodling and I base that on the many times I've heard ya'll denigrate that type of music ..... so if music that has more than power chords to it isn't on your radar then chords that are more than a biad wouldn't be that useful to ya'

[rayc]

a) I use them all the time. Great for substituting into many progressions instead of the standard V7 use a dim one semitone up.
b) of jazz throughout the last hundred years has made good use of them as a tension device and soloing device.

Ah,
a) interesting but that takes solid knowledge, an excellent vocabulary and thinking on the fly (that's jazz) which are attributes I lack.
b) That's the one explanation I've found that is reasonably common creating lots of tension before returning to the one.

There I have it...worth asking the question. Jazz - a lot, rock - not often, substitutions - mainly.

Steely Dan are tainted by experience with me. At teachers' college, 76-78, most folk were into America, Stevie Fleetwood Mac, The Eagles and Steely Dan. The halls of residence were filled with harmonies, pitter patter rhythm and not much else. Smooth ruled and the band needed to be sonically bland.
I did take the opportunity to acquaint myself with S.D.'s catalogue 20 years later and know they were better than that but they still don't resonate.

[vomitHatSteve]

I really have no opinion on Steely Dan. I know the name is a reference to Naked Lunch... and that's about it. They sound kind of like the Blue Oyster Cult songs that aren't "Don't Fear the Reaper", right?

[muttley]

I really have no opinion on Steely Dan. I know the name is a reference to Naked Lunch... and that's about it. They sound kind of like the Blue Oyster Cult songs that aren't "Don't Fear the Reaper", right?

They kind of define what has now become known as "Yacht Rock".

[Armistice]

Like them or not, you will learn some useful chords. And good chord sequences.

Big fan of Gmaj9 - Gmaj7 in root position and stick a spare finger - you're only using two anyway - on the second fret of the G string - an A, or 9th of G. Easy. Nice. I've used that in more than one tune.

Try it.

And the ascending 3 half step up thing with the dim7. Also worth a try.

[rayc]

I really have no opinion on Steely Dan. I know the name is a reference to Naked Lunch... and that's about it. They sound kind of like the Blue Oyster Cult songs that aren't "Don't Fear the Reaper", right?

Ah, that sort of matches my thoughts on The Blue Oyster Cult: MOR/AOR except for Reaper. I know that's a little exaggerated but for the Agents of Fortune album particularly this seems to be the case.

[Armistice]

See I thought Reaper was the most MOR/pop thing BOC did. Everything before that song, and a lot of the AOF album was prior to their chasing hits - and they had their own thing going on but it wasn't middle of the road.

Roeser was the songwriter with the ear for melody, that's for sure. Burn for You was his later radio classic.

I bought a live DVD of them back sometime this century, probably 10 years or so old by now - Bloom, never a great singer by modern standards, was in particularly poor form - wavering over the place. And Lanier with his horrid teeth just looked creepy. They'd replaced the rhythm section with some young guns by this stage.

Saw a more recent YouTube last year some time and I think Lanier is dead now so they'd hired a young gun to actually play lead guitar - Roeser must be struggling - and he just looked like a old balding guy running to fat.

If there's a reason for still wanting to hear BOC, for me it's listening to Roeser's guitar playing on Last Days of May, but he subbed it out to the young gun - disappointing but I guess you can't keep it up forever.

As for Steely Dan, when I look at who gets lumbered with yacht rock as a pejorative term (courtesy of Wikipedia) there's a some interesting and disparate bedfellows. From Supertramp to Foreigner... it's a useless term. Steely Dan did things no other band had done before or since. Whether people like them or not is another thing, but they had serious musical skills and scattered throughout their albums are some of the best in-context guitar solos you'll ever hear.

When you look at the sheet music of great old hit tunes of any era you'll find so much more chordal complexity than the majors and minors and various 7ths that rock music seems to exist on, and which is all that a shitload of people ever learn. Which is why so much of it bores me.

So like Steely Dan, don't like Steely Dan, whatever, but they, and others with some jazz theory, sure do interesting things with chord structures that's different from the limited chord palette of most modern rock/pop, and on that basis, what they do is worth exploring.

[rayc]

Yacht Rock isn't a clear label is it?
I've think Christopher Cross & stuff like that. Soft rock or, more appropriately, soft cock rock.
The Dan..well, obviously I like some of their stuff - some classic hits and just classics.
Dad Rock is another that's definition has slipped its moorings...initially it seemed to describe young rockers who'd grown & mellowed like Paul Weller, then described music dads liked and now refers to older male people making their version of whatever it is they're doing.
That makes almost everyone in RR land a dad rocker I suppose.
Would Home Dad Rock Recordists be even further down the food chain?

[Armistice]

I'm not copping to being Dad rock seeing I lack the foundational quality of being a dad.