Diminished Scale by Morten Gjermundsen.

The Diminished Scale.

Written by Morten Gjermundsen(trollstjerne@yahoo.no)

The Diminished Scale can be often be hear in styles like metal,jazz and fusion of course you can hear it in other music styles as well.It´s used alot by guitar players like Yngwie Malmsteen,George Lynch and so on.

Here is the Diminished Scale in the Key of E.

                                                                             
||--------------------------|--------------------------|-------------------||
||--------------------------|--------------------2--4--|--5----------------||
||--------------------------|-----------2--3--5--------|-------------------||
||-----------------------1--|--2--4--5-----------------|-------------------||
||--------------1--3--4-----|--------------------------|-------------------||
 ||--0--2--3--5--------------|--------------------------|-------------------||

Here is the Same scale one octave higher.


||-----------------------------|--------------------8--9--11--|
||-----------------------------|---------8--10--11------------|
||--------------------------8--|--9--11-----------------------|
||------------7--8--10--11-----|------------------------------|
||--7--9--10-------------------|------------------------------|
||-----------------------------|------------------------------|


                         
--12----------------||
--------------------||
--------------------||
--------------------||
--------------------||
--------------------||

Here´s a lick derived from the Diminished scale.

Listen.


||----------------------------||
||--------------------5-------||
||--------------3---3---------||
||------------5---5-----------||
||--------4-7-----------------||
||--0-3-6---------------------||

And here is another one.

Listen.


||--12--9-----------------12--------||
||---------11---------11------------||
||-------------12--9----------------||
||----------------------------------||
||----------------------------------||
||----------------------------------||

Let´s look at two chords that work well with the Diminished scale.

The first chord is called E minor Seventh Flat Nine and contains the notes : E G Bb D

Listen to the Em7b5 chord.


||--3----------------||
||--3----------------||
||--3----------------||
||--2----------------||
||-------------------||
||-------------------||

And here is the Second chord E diminished it contains the notes : E G Bb Db

Listen.


||--3----------------||
||--2----------------||
||--3----------------||
||--2----------------||
||-------------------||
||-------------------||

More extended patterns will be covered later.To learn other scales check out Guitarpages. Thank you for visiting my site and Good luck with you scale practicing.

Morten Gjermundsen.