SUBSTITUTE
DIMINISHED CHORDS are most often heard in jazz chord progressions, though not unheard of in more‘contemporary’styles. George Harrison, for example, was very fond of a Diminished chord. My Sweet Lord, Got My Mind Set OnYou and Here Comes The Moon (from his 1979 album entitled George Harrison – no, we’re not mixing up our names!) are all great examples of this.
Sometimes considered an oddball to solo over, we can actually see that by putting a Diminished chord in context, looking at patterns that fit and comparing those with some more widely known shapes such as Major, Minor and the best-known Pentatonic scales, we are expanding usable vocabulary without having to feel too lost at sea!
THIS C MAJOR 7 chord comprises the notes C-G-B-E-G and is our ‘home’ from which we’ll move on to the C# Diminished 7 and D Minor 7 chords. This little fragment of music should be enough to demonstrate how our shapes and scales can be modified to fit any chord.
THE C# DIM 7 (C#-G-Bb-E-G) serves as a ‘bridge’ to the D Minor 7. Though we’re now looking at this as a C# chord, the E and G remain. Their relationship with the root has changed, but they still fit as part of a Diminished arpeggio (see Ex5)
OUR FINAL CHORD is D Minor 7 (D-F-C-F). This voicing sounds nice and jazzy because we’ve omitted the 5th (A). It’s also a good fit for
