About Edim — triad voicings
Edim is E, G and Bb — Em 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.
Edim notes and formula
| E | G | Bb |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | ♭3 | ♭5 |
Unstable — it does not sit still.
Also written E°, Eo or E diminished. The same chord either way; which spelling you meet depends on who wrote the chart.
How to play Edim
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.
Edim has 48 of them, on the bottom three strings, the low-middle three, the bottom four strings, the high-middle three, the top three strings, the top four strings, the middle four strings, strings 5-3-2-1 and strings 6-4-3-2, from open position up to the 13th — every inversion the chord has: E in the bass, G in the bass and Bb in the bass. The one to learn first is the G shape at the nut, which is the easiest grip here.
6 of them sit on the low-middle three, 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 xx23x3 — only 3 fretted notes and down at the nut. None of the shapes for Edim 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 15th.
| Frets | Where | Bass | Top | Hand |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| xx23x3 | 2nd fret | E, root position | G | all fretted |
| x75x56 | 5th fret | E, root position | Bb | all fretted |
| x7898x | 7th fret | E, root position | G | all fretted |
| 12-10-x-12-11-x | 10th fret | E, root position | Bb | all fretted |
| x-x-14-15-x-15 | 14th fret | E, root position | G | all fretted |
Tensions. A shell of Edim, root, third and seventh, leaves a string free, and the tones that belong over it are the 11 (A) and the b13 (C).
How to use Edim
In which keys. Every note of Edim belongs to D minor (the ii°, the supertonic) and F major (the vii°, the leading tone).
What to play over Edim
Every note of Edim is in E blues, E locrian, E altered, E diminished and E half-whole diminished.
Chords near Edim
Change one note of Edim and you have Em (the flat fifth becomes a fifth), Edim7 (add the sixth), Em7b5 (add the flat seventh), EmMaj7b5 (add the major seventh), Em/B (the flat fifth becomes a fifth) or Em/G (the flat fifth becomes a fifth).
Edim is a diminished chord — root, minor third, flat fifth. Diminished and half-diminished chords on every root.
On Edim’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.