Adim is A, C and Eb — with the fifth lowered as well.
It sounds compressed and unstable in every direction. Rarely a destination; it is where a line passes through on the way somewhere.
Unstable — it does not sit still.
Also written A°, Ao or A diminished.
In pop songs Adim nearly always sits on the second degree, borrowed from the minor key. Its fifth is the key’s flat sixth, and it falls a half step back to the fifth of G.
Listen for: The fifth of the I rises a half step and falls back. Every other voice is a neighbour too.
Heard in“Cara Mia”“The Air That I Breathe”“Sleep Walk” (going on to V)
The commonest classical use of Adim: in first inversion, between Bb and the same chord with its third in the bass. It stretches the home chord while the bass climbs by step.
Listen for: The bass climbs a whole step twice, root to third of the I, while the notes above step down and back.
In which keys. Every note of Adim belongs to G minor and Bb major.
Every note of Adim is in A blues, A locrian, A altered, A diminished and A half-whole diminished.
Each of those is a page: the scale across the neck, and the chords it harmonises into — which is where Adim sits in it. Every scale.
Change one note of Adim and you have (the flat fifth becomes the fifth), (add the diminished seventh), (add the flat seventh), (add the major seventh), (the flat fifth becomes the fifth) or (the flat fifth becomes the fifth).
Adim is a diminished chord — root, minor third, flat fifth. Diminished and half-diminished chords on every root.
The common shapes and the derived voicings come from different places, and both are explained in how this site is built.
Shows each chord the way this style would voice it, and marks which of its alternatives belong to the idiom.