Ebdim 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 Ebdim — triad voicings
Ebdim is Eb, Gb and A — Ebm 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.
Ebdim notes and formula
| Eb | Gb | A |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | ♭3 | ♭5 |
Unstable — it does not sit still.
Also written Eb°, Ebo or Eb diminished. The same chord either way; which spelling you meet depends on who wrote the chart.
How to play Ebdim
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.
Ebdim has 46 of them, on the bottom three strings, the bottom four strings, the high-middle three, the top three strings, the top four strings, the middle four strings, the low-middle three, strings 6-4-3-2 and strings 5-3-2-1, from open position up to the 12th — every inversion the chord has: Eb in the bass, Gb in the bass and Bbb in the bass. The one to learn first is the Gb shape at the nut, which is the easiest grip here.
6 of them sit on the bottom 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 xx12x2 — only 3 fretted notes and down at the nut. None of the shapes for Ebdim uses an open string, so every one of them is movable; the lowest sits at the 1st fret. None of them needs a barre. Together they cover the neck from the 1st fret to the 14th.
| Frets | Where | Bass | Top | Hand |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| xx12x2 | 1st fret | Eb, root position | Gb | all fretted |
| x64x45 | 4th fret | Eb, root position | A | all fretted |
| x6787x | 6th fret | Eb, root position | Gb | all fretted |
| 11-9-x-11-10-x | 9th fret | Eb, root position | A | all fretted |
| x-x-13-14-x-14 | 13th fret | Eb, root position | Gb | all fretted |
The same notes rebuilt from scratch give 1 open string voicings, each on its own page.
Tensions. A shell of Ebdim, root, third and seventh, leaves a string free, and the tones that belong over it are the 11 (Ab) and the b13 (Cb).
How to use Ebdim
In which keys. Every note of Ebdim belongs to C# minor (the ii°, the supertonic) and E major (the vii°, the leading tone).
What to play over Ebdim
Every note of Ebdim is in Eb blues, Eb locrian, Eb altered, Eb diminished and Eb half-whole diminished.
Chords near Ebdim
Change one note of Ebdim and you have Ebm (the flat fifth becomes a fifth), Ebdim7 (add the sixth), Ebm7b5 (add the flat seventh) or EbmMaj7b5 (add the major seventh).
Ebdim is a diminished chord — root, minor third, flat fifth. Diminished and half-diminished chords on every root.
On Ebdim’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.