One perennial issue for songwriters is what to do when they’ve come up with a melody line and need a chord progression to fit it. You can hear a diminished chord used in this way in the song “God Only Knows” by The Beach Boys.The chord progressions used in most pop songs are relatively simple, mostly consisting of a cycle of between two and four chords that are diatonic to the song’s key.ĭiatonic means that the chords are made up of notes in the parent scale of the key - so if a song is in the key of E major, say, then the majority of the notes in the melody will be found in the E major scale, and the notes that make up the supporting chords - bar one or two exotic exceptions maybe - will be taken from the E major scale too. The most common use of a diminished chord is to transition between two other, more stable-sounding chords. Are diminished chords used in rock songs?ĭiminished keyboard chords are less common than major and minor chords, but are still frequently used in rock and pop songs. To find the notes of a diminished chord, count a step-and-a-half from the root to the third, and then a step-and-a-half from the third to the fifth. The diminished triad uses a minor third, and a lowered fifth, called a “diminished fifth.” A diminished fifth is three whole-steps, or six half-steps, above the root note. The third interval in a minor chord is called a “minor third.” The fifth interval in a minor chord is the same as in a major chord, the interval of a “perfect fifth.” Most rock and pop songs use a mixture of major and minor piano chords. “Comfortably Numb” is an example of a rock song that begins with a minor chord. Minor chords are also very common in rock and pop music.
From the third, count two whole-steps (or four half steps) to find the fifth. To play a minor chord, select any root note, then count three half-steps up to the third. Minor chords, like major chords, contain three basic keyboard notes: a root note, a third, and a fifth.
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