 The Fingering Forum
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Author: Carolyn
Date: 2003-07-30 16:23
This is a little disagreement a friend of mine in jazz band and I had...we were learning ii-V-I's, and other things like it, so we had to write out all of the chords, I-vii. We're working in the key of C, and my friend says the vii is B7 diminished, but I say it's B-7b5, because if you double flat the 7th, then the 7th becomes a note that isn't in the original scale. Who's right?
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Author: d-oboe
Date: 2003-07-30 19:58
it essentially means the same thing...but I think "diminished" would be more appropriate because it describes what happened to the chord.
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Author: Carolyn
Date: 2003-07-30 21:12
Ok, that sort of makes sense...But wouldn't it be a 'diminished fifth', not a diminished chord? Because for an entire chord to be diminished, the 7th is double flatted, and that would add in accidental notes that aren't supposed to be in the key signature.
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Author: d-oboe
Date: 2003-07-31 03:29
ok I see what you mean now...it would make more sense to specify what exactly is being diminished.
D-oboe
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Author: Gnomon
Date: 2003-07-31 07:04
The vii chord is a triad. It has only three notes. In the key of C, the vii chord is B-D-F. It is called a diminished chord because both the D and the F are a semitone lower than they would be in a B major chord B-D#-F#.
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Author: Carolyn
Date: 2003-07-31 12:04
Thanks for answering my question, d-oboe and Gnomon... this is making a lot more sense now. But is it possible to add on the 7th? if the 7th is included, how would you name the chord, since the 7th can't be double flatted?
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Author: TorusTubarius
Date: 2003-07-31 13:56
If you stick with notes in the scale and add the seventh to the chord B-D-F to get B-D-F-A, what you have is a half-diminished B chord. This is different from the chord B-D-F-Ab which is a fully diminished B chord.
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Author: TorusTubarius
Date: 2003-07-31 18:07
Knowing my handwriting, probably illegibly.
I don't know how to reproduce the symbols here, but to write a diminished chord you write the letter name with a small superscript circle next to it. For a half-diminished chord you write the same thing with a slash through the circle.
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Author: moley
Date: 2003-08-13 23:41
Carolyn, you're right, and your friend is wrong.
Well, it's not quite as simple as that, but:
The whole diminished thing is a bit of a can of worms. Some people make the distinction between a diminished chord and a diminished 7th, and some don't. Some people will tell you a diminished chord has 3 notes - 1 b3 b5, and a dim7 has 4, 1 b3 b5 bb7. However some will tell you that a dim and dim7 are the same thing - 1 b3 b5 bb7.
If you be specific, and say diminished triad, then yes, chord vii is a diminished triad, but to just call it a diminished chord is too vague and could be misleading.
As you quite rightly point out, if you add a 7th to chord vii in C, you get B F D A - which is Bm7b5 (A.K.A B half-diminished), which is NOT the same thing as Bdim7 or Bdim.
Personally, I'd steer clear of calling chord vii a diminished chord at all, and call it m7b5, or half-diminished. In Jazz at least, in general chords do have 7ths, and if you talk to a Jazz musician about it, they'll call it a m7b5 or half-diminished, NOT a diminished chord.
The symbol for a dim chord is little circle, like the "degrees" symbol, and the symbol for half-diminished is a circle with a diagonal line through (like the greek letter phi).
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