Hey Friend,

We're down to the last chord in the key of  C major. When you listen to it, you will immediately feel tension. You will WANT to move on from this chord! In most cases, you'll be drawn up in pitch to the C major chord. It will feel like you've ended a journey, like there is resolution to a struggle.

I find it a bit odd that there is a chord like this in every major and minor key - this off-putting diminished (°) chord. It definitely has its uses, (more usable in Jazz than in Rock), but the notes of the key sound so much more harmonious when used in the six other chords we've looked at. 

Think about it a second... none of the notes have changed from the scale. 

Perhaps it's the location of the B note in relation to the tonic/octave. Maybe when Pythagoras was figuring out the ideal ratios for the scales he thought we needed an odd one, just for those times when you need a really sour sound to make the good ones pop. 

Here's what has happened to cause this chord to go so bad. In every other chord we've visited, the tonic of the key had a perfect fifth interval to strengthen it (them's the one a five notes from the chord). With a diminished chord, just because of the way the notes line up in the scale, we end up with a flatted five note, shifted down a half step (one fret). That throws our ears for a loop!

Our ears WANT to hear that perfect fifth harmonizing with the tonic note, and when they don't, the sound is unpleasant, to say the least.

Don't blame the diminished chord - it's not its fault. I mean, it is a bit a of a "PITA" (pain in the a..) to play, but so are barre chords, right?

So the B° chord (all diminished chords, actually) is constructed by taking the B, D and F notes from the scale and cramming them together. As far how that looks from a C major scale perspective, it's the 7, 9 and 11 notes.

But build it from its own key (B major) and you get a different picture. B major is like this:

Look what happens when you flatten the third and the fifth notes:

So that's the formula for a diminished chord - write out the scale, pick out the 1 3 5 notes, then flatten the 3 and 5, meaning drop each note down one fret. 

Because there is only one diminished chord per key, we don't have to worry about remembering a bunch of keys where B° lives. It's only found in the keys of C major and its relative minor, A minor. So there's a bonus.

And the minor keys:

You may notice as you play the exercises today that switching between the B and B° chords doesn't sound too bad. When we get to chords in the key of C, though, you'll hear why the diminished chord gets looked down on. See you tomorrow.

Peace~

Dave