Diminished Arpeggios are EASY...if You Watch This!

[00:00:00]You know, the things I find most confusing about using diminished arpeggios is seeing them and applying them. I want to show you some ways where you can both hear where to use these great arpeggios and see them on the guitar so that finding them in the heat of the moment isn't so daunting. But first, let's play.

[00:00:16]>> [music] [music] >> So, let's talk about what I was doing there. I'm basically playing over a four-bar progression where a G minor 7 >> [music] >> is the chord I'm playing for three bars and in the fourth bar I'm playing a D7, [music] okay? And that D7 has a job. It's what's often referred to as a functioning dominant chord. And that functioning dominant chord, the job of it really is to create tension to pull us back to that home base.

[00:01:14]You can hear it.

[00:01:16]Doesn't want to settle there. It wants to go back to our minor one.

[00:01:20]>> [music] >> Now, every major, minor, and dominant chord can be approached by a functioning dominant chord and we can find it relatively easily by we take our one chord, in this case [music] we're going to use G minor 7, our fifth up is D.

[00:01:33]We're going to make it dominant.

[00:01:35]D7, we could make it a sharp nine.

[00:01:38]>> [music] >> We can make it a flat nine.

[00:01:41]And resolve back to our minor one there.

[00:01:43]We could make it a uh sharp nine flat [music] 13 back to it sounds good. But all of that stuff has altered notes in it that allows us to kind of implement the diminished arpeggios that I'm going to show you. But real quickly on the functioning dominant idea, you can try this with any major or minor dominant chord, and it will work. If you take a C, fifth up from C is G7.

[00:02:07]>> [music] >> Right? Perfect resolution. Playing A minor 7, >> [music] >> fifth up from that, E7.

[00:02:17]What about [music] going to F7? Play a C7.

[00:02:22]You're hearing a song already because we're going >> [music] >> Okay? That's the stuff that's hidden in your chord progressions, and you'll hear it a lot. And anytime you have a functioning dominant chord, there's an opportunity to use some of these arpeggios. So, over that D7 chord, we're going to play a diminished seventh arpeggio, but not a D diminished seventh arpeggio. And this is the first confusing part. We're actually going to play arpeggios built from the third, which is F sharp, >> [music] >> the fifth, which is A, the C, which is the flat seven, and the E flat, which is the flat nine.

[00:03:03]>> [music] >> The confusing thing is is we never played a D, but it works over top of that chord. And here's why. The notes of a D7 flat nine chord and an F sharp diminished seventh, for instance, >> [music] >> are actually the same minus the D, okay?

[00:03:24]So, a D7 flat nine >> [music] >> has a D, has the F sharp, has the C, and has the E flat.

[00:03:33]And that flat nine really adds that wonderful tension. But, if we play an F sharp diminished seventh, lo and behold, F sharp, C, E flat, and A.

[00:03:45]Okay? Same chord just minus the root note. So, now that we know that we're going to be using the chord tones from a D7 flat 9 minus the root. We want to find them on the guitar in an efficient way. And I think this arpeggio is the best way to get started and it provides, you know, some really good melodic ideas right out of the gate, okay? So, we're going to start with this F sharp.

[00:04:06]And I should tell you that I'm going to be blending sharps and flats, okay? Uh cuz the F sharp is the third of D and the E flat is the flat 9 from the E of D, okay? So, sorry for you enharmonic purists. I'm going to offend you a little bit, okay? So, we'll start on the F sharp >> [music] >> and we're going to be building this arpeggio based on minor thirds. That's how you build a diminished sound is going in minor thirds. So, a minor third up from F sharp is A, [music] which is also the fifth of the chord.

[00:04:34]Then we go to C, which is also the flat seventh and a minor third up from A.

[00:04:40]Then an E flat, [music] which is a minor third up from C and then we start the process again. F sharp, A.

[00:04:47]>> [music] >> Okay, so that is it in its entirety. A, F sharp, E flat, C, A, F sharp. I went a little fast there, but [music] I transcribed it for you and put it in the links for free.

[00:05:00]Then we're going to go E flat, C, A.

[00:05:03]>> [music] >> And you hear how it kind of wants to pull you to that G.

[00:05:16]That tension really wants to pull you back to the home base there, okay?

[00:05:20]>> [music] >> So, we got that fingering.

[00:05:26]And as you saw in my little solo example, I'm not going and, you know, playing that in my solo.

[00:05:32]I'm just going cuz I need to get back to a G minor sound over top of that chord.

[00:05:40]But we want to expand on this and move it further up the guitar. So, what do we do? We look for the chord tone. Next chord tone is A. Let's put our first finger there, and you can use the same fingering cuz it's symmetrical. It works all the time as long as you go up a minor third. So, now we're in A, C, E flat, F sharp, A, C.

[00:06:06]Okay? So, there it is.

[00:06:09]>> [music] >> It really pulls you to that G minor. All right?

[00:06:14]Now, let's continue up. We got a C, E flat, F sharp, A, C again, and E flat.

[00:06:25]>> [music] >> Okay?

[00:06:29]And then we can continue to go up even further. We can start on the E flat.

[00:06:34]>> [music] [music] >> And when you start to see that shape, see those little moves there?

[00:06:50]>> [music] >> It's always that kind of fingering. That minor third >> [music] >> there.

[00:07:02]>> [music] >> You know, and of course if you're F sharp, you can even go here down to E flat.

[00:07:07]>> [music] >> It pulls you back.

[00:07:15]Uh let's do B here. Sorry.

[00:07:19]>> [music] >> There it is. I got it. Sometimes I'll lose where an F sharp is.

[00:07:27]>> [music] >> But, we got it. Okay? So, that fingering will really help you find those diminished sounds as long as you're playing off of the functioning dominant, which in this case is a D7.

[00:07:37][music] >> [music] >> But you hear what I'm doing there?

[00:07:54]It's another thing I want to show you.

[00:07:56]All right, so let's bring the track back in and I'll kind of telegraph when I'm going to use that arpeggio over the D7 chord, but remember, I always have to get back to G minor tonality, whether it's a minor pentatonic or a natural minor scale or a G minor 7 arpeggio, etc. Okay? Here we go.

[00:08:12]1 2 3 >> [music] >> Here it comes.

[00:08:24]Something [music] simple.

[00:08:31]>> [music] >> You heard it. Didn't even have to tell you.

[00:08:44]Here it comes. [music] >> [music] [music] >> All right. So, there you go. Just some ideas of how you're going to use this arpeggio, but the key is to abandon it once you need to get back to the G minor 7 chord or whatever your destination chord is. So, another great way to practice this is something I do all the time. I just sit on the couch, unplugged, no backing track, and I'll start with the arpeggio as a springboard, and I'll see if I can land it to my home base, which is G minor 7 in this case. Okay? So, I'll just play The ear wants you to resolve it, so I play the arpeggio and try to find maybe a pentatonic or a minor scale idea you know, out of it.

[00:09:58]I got to go somewhere.

[00:10:01]Minor pentatonic. Minor pentatonic, minor pentatonic, etc. >> [music] >> So, you know, when you're improvising with these new ideas, it's about landing it, you know, landing the plane in the right spot.

[00:10:17]>> [music] [music] >> And that way you're not really tied to a track and the pressure of performing that arpeggio for that one bar. Okay?

[00:10:32]That's where we're getting to, but this is a great way to practice it just to get the sounds at your fingertips.

[00:10:38]Pun intended.

[00:10:41]You know, you could do it here.

[00:10:45]Nice little pentatonic idea.

[00:10:48]But one thing you could also do when you get really good at this is you can use that springboard approach just over a minor 7th chord cuz you're kind of always implying that >> [music] >> five to one move. So, if you just play, I've just got a loop here with a G minor 7th chord.

[00:11:04]And you know, of course, all day we can play pentatonic.

[00:11:10]But what we can also do is maybe approach that >> [music] >> I don't like to overdo it, but it's there.

[00:11:27]See, I did a little flurry there.

[00:11:34]I There, I got a little excited.

[00:11:42]Calm down, Corey.

[00:11:57]So, you can have some fun with it over one chord when you start to really understand it. That would be like sort of the third tier.

[00:12:04]And also try to play it when you're just sitting around practicing by yourself and there's no track, so you can get those sounds.

[00:12:15]Even if you play one note to resolve it, you got it. Okay? Some important stuff, some really valuable stuff that's not the easiest to teach in a short amount of time or very entertaining. You know, I'm really trying to make the lessons on this channel something that is valuable for you to come back to time and again.

[00:12:32]All right, so some important stuff there that is not the easiest to explain. I hope I did it in a way that was kind of methodical and easy to digest because this stuff is next level. It's not the easiest thing to start using or understanding quickly and I hope we did that today here for you. Now, like I said, you can get that track. You can get the PDF transcription of all those arpeggio shapes. I put them in all the spots you can in an octave basically.

[00:12:58]So, download that as well and have fun because this is like, you know, the next level of of improvising in my opinion.

[00:13:06]You have your pentatonics, you have your major minor scales, you have your arpeggios that are, you know, major, minor, dominant, all that kind of stuff.

[00:13:14]Uh triads, of course. This is kind of a way to get more sophisticated sounds because you're going to have those 5 7 to 1 moves, dominant 7 5 to your 1 chord, whether it's major, minor, or dominant. Okay? And these these ideas will work for sure. Okay? Cool. So, we've done a lot. Go download the stuff for free. Get the transcription and the track at my website workingclassguitar.com.

[00:13:38]And I'll see you guys on the next lesson.