Learn About the Root Position for Diminished Chords on Piano

Video Transcript

"MIKE LAIS: Hi. I'm Mike Lais and on behalf of Expert Village, this is diminished chord voicings. The diminished triad, this is one that involves a flat 3 and a flat 5 whereas you may know, in a minor, you're going to use just a flat 3 instead of the major triad being major 3rd and a major 5th. But let's take a look at it. For the diminished triad, in a root position, we're going to want to be here, okay. So, let's take the C chord, for example, and we're going to go--the C major triad is going to look this, right? The C minor triad, we're going to take the 3rd and we're going to flat it. So, that's the C minor triad. Now, the diminished triad is when we're going to flat the 3 and the 5 so we need to take the G and make that a G flat. It's just looks like an F sharp but we need to technically say that it's G flat. So, it's a flat 5. But that's just going to be 1, flat 3 and flat 5, okay, right? It's kind of a spooky chord, if you will. But that's your diminished triad in root position, 1, flat 3, flat 5."