Understand the Function of Diminished Piano Chords

Video Transcript

"MIKE LAIS: Hi. I'm Mike Lais and on behalf of Expert Village, this is diminished chord voicings. Alright, so the function of the diminished chord, why and when are you going to use 'em? Well, there's a few places. Predominantly, a diminished chord is going to be used as like a passing tone or a passing chord to get to the next one so that you can use chromatic or you can use chromatic notes which is moving up and down by half steps like this. Okay, that's just chromaticism right there, just going up and down in half steps, right? So, if you have any of that in a melody, you're going to want to use a diminished chord and this is going to pass you to the next one. So, let's say, alright. Let's say, for example, I was here. I was going to play a C minor chord if I just diminished that, that sets me up to play a B7 already, which will then take me to E minor. Okay? So, it's just kinda like a diminished you want to either bring it down, right, or you can go up with it. Right, just like that. But going diminished, you probably going to hear it most commonly played when you're going down to a chord. So, for our C diminished, we're going to go to a B major. So, like I said, diminished chords are usually used for passing tones and just, to kinda get you from point A to point B. So, if we're going to be C minor, we're going to go C diminished to a B, just like that."