BY KATE KOENIG

Welcome to the most recent installment of Chord by Chord, a sequence designed to construct your understanding of concord and the fretboard. In earlier classes, you’ve realized a bunch of various shapes for main and minor chords, and the way to join them. Now it’s time to deal with a brand new chord kind—diminished.

Diminished chords have a dissonant sound and are sometimes used to add pressure to progressions. I’ll begin by displaying you ways to remodel A minor shapes into A diminished (dim).

The Work

As proven in Instance 1, keep in mind that a minor chord is comprised of three notes—the basis, the minor third, and the fifth. In a diminished chord, the primary two notes are the identical, however the fifth is flatted (Instance 2). On paper, this distinction may appear delicate, however the variance in sound is definitely fairly vital.

Instance 3 makes use of the guitar’s center strings, with the basis be aware performed on the open A string. In Instance 4, we transfer slightly additional up the neck, nonetheless utilizing the 4 center strings with the open A. Be aware the usage of the fourth finger on the Am chord, permitting for a clean transition to the Adim. For a extra standard fingering on the Am, you possibly can strive utilizing your third finger as a substitute of your fourth.

In Instance 5, you’ll use solely the highest three strings, however if you happen to fingerpick, you possibly can additionally embody the basis be aware on the open fifth string. Journey up to eighth place for Instance 6. I recommend barring the highest three strings along with your first finger, so that you simply don’t have to transfer your complete hand when switching between the 2 shapes. Instance 7, which is the best on the neck however maybe the simplest on this lesson, entails taking part in an Am chord on the highest three strings and sliding the first-string E down a fret, to make Adim. Once more, be happy to incorporate the open A.

The Consequence

By now you’re feeling snug deriving Adim chords from varied Am shapes. Remember the fact that in context, diminished chords often play transitional roles. So as a substitute of a demonstrating a track, I’ll simply say {that a} basic instance of the diminished sound is heard in previous film soundtracks, when a villain is tying somebody, typically a damsel in misery, to the railroad tracks as a prepare approaches. That’s it for this lesson—keep tuned for subsequent time, once we’ll repeat the method with Em and Edim chords.