Chico, Harpo and the Dread Diminished Chord
Published: Thu, 03/28/24
I imagine the foundations of Chico's piano skills lay in good old-fashioned childhood lessons, perhaps of the ruler-on-the-knuckles variety. I also imagine the things that made him such a delight to watch were acquired in less formal ways – observing other entertainers as a kid, or maybe just inventing ways to amuse himself and the people around him.
Which is more or less the yin and yang of getting good – picture a spectrum with formal training on one end and sheer invention on the other, and most of us are somewhere in the middle. As a professional explainer, I feel obliged to know the official reasons why things work, but sometimes I just want to say, "well, y'know...when you do it this way, it just sounds good."
That's pretty much how I feel about the dread diminished chord. I get how diminished chords work, it makes sense to me now, but I was sticking them in between other chords to smooth out various chord progressions long before I really had a handle on exactly what was going on – in other words, doing stuff I learned from hearing other play, combined with basic trial and error.
In today's Youtube lesson, I take the chord substitution moves from Tuesday's lesson on "Trouble In Mind," and show you three places to add diminished chords to smooth things out and strengthen the motion from chord to chord:
Three Ways To Use Diminished Chords
Today's lesson explains three specific moves, but each one is completely portable. In this Saturday's Chord Substitutions workshop, you'll not only learn how to create chord transitions like these ones, building up a vocabulary of substitutions and moves, but also how to apply them to various blues chord progressions. It's almost like learning to improvise, but with chords, not licks.
Sign up below to join me on Saturday! And if you can't attend the workshop live, you can sign up anyway and watch an on-demand replay later, whenever you have the time:
Chord Substitutions Workshop
More soon,
David