The Diminished Chord

PStl · Post by **PStl** » Fri Mar 19, 2010 4:02 pm

What happened to the diminished chord in rock music?
It's treated like an outcast! And half-diminished gets no repect at all.
They're not just novelty acts.
Take the road less traveled!

VENTGtr · Post by **VENTGtr** » Fri Mar 19, 2010 4:33 pm

During the 60s, 70s, and 90s, there were a lot of these cool, interesting chords used.

The 80s hair stuff was, for the vast majority, 5ths. Open chords for the ballads...then the 5ths when the "heavier" part of the ballad kicked in.

Nowadays, the thing is using multi-tracked single notes layering octaves (Octaves are great when used judiciously...but now they're just there so there's SOME kind of guitar), or riffs in Drop D using....5ths.

Post by **Ron** » Fri Mar 19, 2010 4:37 pm

Felix calls them "demolished chords", haha!

floodcitybrass · Post by **floodcitybrass** » Fri Mar 19, 2010 7:19 pm

diablos intervales

VENTGtr · Post by **VENTGtr** » Fri Mar 19, 2010 9:12 pm

floodcitybrass wrote:diablos intervales

bassist_25 · Post by **bassist_25** » Fri Mar 19, 2010 10:05 pm

There's a middle ground in rock music between having bland chord progressions and overcomplicating the harmony with complex voicings. Sometimes there's a fine line between these two scenarios. I've been a known abuser of 9th chords because they add a lot of harmonic character, but I can still choose to avoid the 3rd which can sometimes be a troublesome interval, especially in music that's not very diatonic to begin with. A lot of popular music exists in that grey space where it's not quite major and it's not quite minor, and it often dances around dorian and mixolydian without really spelling out the tonality it's trying to establish.

As some here know, I'm a pretty big Stone Temple Pilots fan. A while back, I checked out a bunch of their live videos on YouTube. I was really surprised with the sparse amount of gain Dean Deleo runs live, because the guitar sound is so huge on the Core and No. 4 albums. It makes sense, though, because Deleo uses a lot of strange chord voicings, many of them crossing over into the realm of dissonance. A lot of amp saturation would probably make those strange voicings sound like a harmonic clusterfuck.

VENTgtr wrote:Nowadays, the thing is using multi-tracked single notes layering octaves (Octaves are great when used judiciously...but now they're just there so there's SOME kind of guitar), or riffs in Drop D using....5ths.

I've definitely noticed the use of octaves on guitars in the past 10 or 15 years. The alternating D#/E part of the riff in Lit's My Own Worst Enemy is a perfect example. It seems to be a way of fattening up a riff without, again, "committing" to a particular harmonic motiff.

whitedevilone · Post by **whitedevilone** » Fri Mar 19, 2010 10:14 pm

I play them all the time.I learned from the master,Piggy!

onegunguitar · Post by **onegunguitar** » Sat Mar 20, 2010 1:11 am

whitedevilone wrote:I play them all the time.I learned from the master,Piggy!

I figured you'd post on this topic,hahaha!!!!

Charltor · Post by **Charltor** » Sun Mar 21, 2010 1:14 pm

Ron wrote:Felix calls them "demolished chords", haha!

Yeah I heard him say that before! LMAO! Throw out the rule book when your "Hurricainin'"!

lonewolf · Post by **lonewolf** » Sun Mar 21, 2010 4:32 pm

Use of the diminished chord has been suspended.

PStl · Post by **PStl** » Sun Mar 21, 2010 6:13 pm

lonewolf wrote:Use of the diminished chord has been suspended.

now we're getting somewhere!

RFBuck · Post by **RFBuck** » Mon Mar 22, 2010 9:51 pm

Or has it been susaddnined?

floodcitybrass · Post by **floodcitybrass** » Tue Mar 23, 2010 3:10 am

I think they aren't used in rock much is becuase they don't sound good with distortion.

The power chord (5ths) sound so great because there aren't any extraneos oscillation.
Playing 3rds and 4th "complicates" a distorted guitar sound and you start getting some oscillating overtones and the sound loses defination of the actual notes. Its starts to sound like noise. So my option is that fully diminished chords just dont sound good with distortion.

Colton · Post by **Colton** » Tue Mar 23, 2010 6:14 am

oh, thats what theyre really called. i lern frum reel good lurnrs

RFBuck · Post by **RFBuck** » Tue Mar 23, 2010 8:44 pm

I c hukd on fonics wurked fer u two.