 Hi everyone, this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this lesson, I'm going to share with you a very common question really asked by a few of my students. The half diminished chord versus the full diminished chord. So the half diminished and the full diminished have different functional harmony around them. They resolve differently and that's what we are here to do. And as some of you may know, if you follow the channel regularly, I tend to talk a lot about minor progressions and minor music composition in general. So I tend to use these diminished chords a lot, the half and the full, to make music that way. You can also see some of my riffs, filter them by minor in the website which we have and you will get a lot of this minor feel which has a lot of these diminished chords. So in the lesson, first of all, I'm going to talk about the theory behind the chords, how you can build it. Then I'm going to talk about how you can use it to resolve music, not just for a particular genre like jazz, but in general, we look at how the chords are designed in order to resolve to wherever they need to resolve. So before we get cracking, it will be awesome if you could consider hitting that subscribe button, there's a bell icon for regular notifications and leave us a like, leave us a comment with something you'd like to learn and there are notes on Patreon for this lesson as well as other lessons in the past and which we are going to do in the future. Do consider being a Patreon on Patreon.com. Let's get cracking. So I'm going to take the key of D or the note D and look at how we can form the chords. So first of all, the half diminished chord. So the half diminished chord is formed. First of all, both the chords are diminished chords with another interval added on to them. So what is that other interval? That's what we're going to figure out in the lesson. So you start with the, you're figuring out the D half diminished chord, which is D and now you build a diminished chord. So what's the formula to build a diminished chord? You do minor third. What's a minor third? Well, it's tricky to show you step by step. Well, it is one, two, three steps from anywhere, but in reality, a minor third should just be remembered by you. So D to F is a minor third. And then from F, you build another minor third to give yourself a flat or you can think of it as a D minor chord with a flat five, where the perfect fifth A got flattened to the A flat. So that's your diminished vibe. And now to add to this, to make it a half diminished, we add a minor seventh. In fact, we also call this another name for this chord is the minor seventh flat five chord. You'll find that used a lot more in charts. And you also use a Greek symbol five for the chord of Phi for it. That one. Okay. So diminished plus minor seventh. A quick trick to get yourselves a minor seventh would be it's an octave minus two. There we go. Octave minus two gives you a minor seven. So in reality, you need to know these intervals very well. Just on your fingertips by eye, by mind, you should know this really well. So what's a half diminished chord again or a minor seventh flat five? It's a diminished chord with a minor seventh or it's a minor chord or minor seventh chord with a flat five, whichever way you look at it, you can get it that way. And it's interesting to know that when you invert a minor seventh flat five, let's say when you play it on F, which is the next inversion, you get a minor sixth chord. Very different flavor, very mysterious, minor sixth. So minor seven flat five or a half diminished is also a minor sixth chord in disguise. You could think of it that way. And a minor seventh flat five exists in the major scale if you think about it. So if you look at the E flat major scale, you'll realize that the seventh degree of any scale will form a diminished chord. But when you extend the harmony, diminished extension, minor seven flat five. So the minor seven flat five is there in the major scale in the seventh degree. But the other one, which I'm going to tell you may not be there in the major scale because you don't have that note. So that's where the other chord comes in, which is called as the fully diminished chord or the whole full diminished chord. So how do we form that? It's just a cluster of minor thirds. So if you take again the stack from D, a good way I think to form it would be minor third, minor third, minor third, three minor thirds gives you a full diminished chord. So that's the part. The reason why a minor third, minor third, minor third combo will work is because this is a symmetric chord. That means it's the same chord when you reverse it or invert it rather. So if you play D, F, A flat, B and now start with F, this chord is called the F diminished seventh chord. Then if you start it with G sharp or A flat, that's a G sharp diminished seventh chord. Same notes. That's a B diminished seventh chord. Same notes. So you need to remember that within a pack of four and if one of them is a D diminished seventh chord, then you invert it and you just get the other three diminished seventh chords. So in total, you have 12 diminished seventh chords, but they're all built through three shapes or three note combinations. So do check out the notes in the Patreon PDF. You'll find it there. So shape one gives you D diminished seventh, shape two gives you F diminished seventh, shape three gives you G sharp or A flat diminished seventh, shape four gives you B diminished seventh or C flat diminished seventh. Now this is not the property with the case of the half diminished chord or the minor seven flat five wherein when you invert a minor seven flat five, I told you this earlier you get a minor sixth chord. So you're not going to get the same chord. You're going to get some other chord and it doesn't work symmetrically as the diminished seventh. So there are how many diminished seventh chords to learn in total? Well, the answer is a sum total of three because you can invert them and you get three into four, 12. While the half diminished chord, you have to learn all 12 all 12 of them are unique. So it's in my opinion it's a lot easier to play this diminished seventh chord on the piano than it is to play the half diminished chord. It's just a bit different on the hand because of that additional stretch there. So we need to be careful. I often have made that mistake and probably still do till this day where I tend to play like a diminished seventh chord instead of a half or vice versa and the music can sound really bad at times. So let's look at the use cases of these two chords the way at least I would like to present them in this lesson. There may be a lot more use cases as well which we have which we'll not be able to cover in this video. Now the half diminished chord the way I like to use it again I'm a huge fan of minor. You can use the half diminished chord to be the two of the two five one in the minor key. In the minor key the two is not a minor seventh it's not that's not how it's designed that would have been in the major scale D minor seventh G seventh C major seventh but the half diminished chord is that and this is directly promoting the C harmonic minor which is eventually going to happen D half diminished or minor seventh flat five that goes to the five of the scale which is G seventh and then it goes back to C minor okay that's a dominant and then the minor so the half diminished chord doesn't resolve to the tonic well it could but it form it wants to kind of go to the five it's a bit stronger there so that's your half diminished while a whole diminished which is this D diminished seventh just goes directly to C minor it's almost like a dominant chord and a good way to prove that is if you play the D diminished seventh chord now form the dominant chord of the C minor scale what is the dominant the five right play the five and it really sweetly or beautifully wants to go to the C minor and there's another few tricks up the diminished seventh chord sleeve it doesn't only resolve like D diminished seventh D minor seventh flat five resolved to G seventh which resolved to C minor but then the D diminished seventh chord goes to C minor scale it can also go to three other scales so in total a diminished seventh chord a full diminished seventh chord takes you to four scales let me show you that that option right here so you play the chord one way to kind of train your ear what is the next scale right is to drop any of these four notes down by one semitone or down by one half step so I'll start with the top finger B dropping B by B to B flat and now you realize that B flat is actually a B flat dominant seventh chord where does B flat dominant seventh want to go it is the five of D flat so now if you just play the D diminished seven it goes really well to E flat major it could also go to dominant seventh in disguise going to B flat so it kind of goes to C minor and the journey continues the same strategy play the chord drop now I'm I already showed you with B dropping by one you can now drop the G sharp or a flat down to G that gives you your C minor which I already showed you goes to C major as well now I'm now going to drop this F note which is the sex the second note what does that form it forms a dominant seventh chord is the five of the major so even a melody but to feel that it's always good to drop by one step drop one note of the diminished seventh chord by one step kind of helps your year and the theory to be like oh yeah it's E seventh which is the five of the a minor or a major beauty of the car it can go to the minor scale or the major scale and we have one more movement or one more part of this chord that's it what's that D flat dominant seventh or C sharp dominant seventh I just drop the D D to the C sharp C sharp is the five of the F sharp minor or F sharp major so beautiful chord it can go to so many scales if you think about it it can actually go to eight scales right it's going to four major and the same names minors as well so I think that's a huge distinction between a full diminished chord and a half diminished chord a half diminished seventh chord is more used as a cadence you'll use it more as a two five one resolution it's more rooted to a key like a major or a minor harmonic minor most more commonly while a full diminished chord is like a dominant chord a dominant chord wants to resolve to a tonic so it's a very unstable chord and you use it a lot for runs you will use it a lot in gypsy jazz flamenco music a lot of minor music classical music we've heard it we've even heard it in dance music you know like I will survive the first chord has that you know it has that diminished seventh chord so yeah hopefully you guys found the lesson useful hopefully you have the distinction between the two so a final follow-up to this would be practice your half diminished seventh chords as two five one movements that would be D minor seven flat five G seventh going to C minor and practice your full diminished seventh chords drop one to down a step and resolve it to the major key or the minor key and then drop the other one drop the other one drop the last one incredible chord you guys should definitely use it and let me know in the comments if you found the lesson useful if you have any questions if you'd like to learn something in the future we'd be happy to consider it again this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music if you'd like to learn something more at the intermediate and advanced levels you can go to our website fill up a form or reach us on email or whatsapp and one of us can help you forward with your admission right guys thanks a ton cheers catch you in the next one