Abdim guitar chord
Three notes across one string set.
- Tap a note to hear it
- Arrows change position
- Fingers, notes or intervals
- Play the chord
About Abdim — triad voicings
Abdim is Ab, Cb and D — Abm 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.
Abdim notes and formula
| Ab | Cb | D |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | ♭3 | ♭5 |
Unstable — it does not sit still.
Also written Ab°, Abo or Ab diminished. The same chord either way; which spelling you meet depends on who wrote the chart.
How to play Abdim
Three notes on one string set. No seventh, so nothing is claimed about the chord beyond its quality.
Thin on their own, excellent over a bass line or against someone else’s harmony.
Abdim has 46 of them, on the low-middle three, the high-middle three, the middle four strings, the bottom three strings, the bottom four strings, the top three strings, the top four strings, strings 6-4-3-2 and strings 5-3-2-1, from open position up to the 12th — every inversion the chord has: Ab in the bass, Cb in the bass and Ebb in the bass. The one to learn first is the Cb shape at the nut, which is the easiest grip here.
6 of them sit on the middle four strings, so you can run the inversions up one set without changing strings — which is the whole reason to learn them as a family rather than as separate grips.
Start with xx67x7 — only 3 fretted notes. None of the shapes for Abdim uses an open string, so every one of them is movable; the lowest sits at the 2nd fret. None of them needs a barre. Together they cover the neck from the 2nd fret to the 13th.
| Frets | Where | Bass | Top | Hand |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 42x43x | 2nd fret | Ab, root position | D | all fretted |
| xx67x7 | 6th fret | Ab, root position | Cb | all fretted |
| x-11-9-x-9-10 | 9th fret | Ab, root position | D | all fretted |
| x-11-12-13-12-x | 11th fret | Ab, root position | Cb | all fretted |
The same notes rebuilt from scratch give 6 open string voicings, each on its own page.
Tensions. A shell of Abdim, root, third and seventh, leaves a string free, and the tones that belong over it are the 11 (Db) and the b13 (Fb).
How to use Abdim
In which keys. Every note of Abdim belongs to F# minor (the ii°, the supertonic) and A major (the vii°, the leading tone).
What to play over Abdim
Every note of Abdim is in Ab blues, Ab locrian, Ab altered, Ab diminished and Ab half-whole diminished.
Chords near Abdim
Change one note of Abdim and you have Abm (the flat fifth becomes a fifth), Abdim7 (add the sixth), Abm7b5 (add the flat seventh) or AbmMaj7b5 (add the major seventh).
Abdim is a diminished chord — root, minor third, flat fifth. Diminished and half-diminished chords on every root.
On Abdim’s sound and use this page follows Stefan Kostka, Dorothy Payne & Byron Almén, Tonal Harmony (McGraw-Hill, 8th ed., 2018). The shapes and the derived voicings come from different places, and both are explained in where the chords and the theory come from.