Bb diminished scale

8 notes · alternating whole and half steps

Eight notes built by alternating a tone and a semitone. It repeats every minor third, so it is really only three different scales, and each of them is the scale of four diminished seventh chords at once.

Heard in: Over a dim7 chord; Stravinsky, bebop turnarounds, horror scoring.

The notes of Bb diminished

The whole scale, with each note’s degree underneath it.

Bb
1
C
2
Db
♭3
Eb
4
Fb
♭5
Gb
♭6
G
6
A
7
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Twelve frets in standard tuning, high E at the top. Each dot is labelled with its degree rather than its note, because that is the part that moves with you when you play the shape somewhere else. The green dot is the root of whatever is being shown — the scale, or the chord chosen out of it.

Chords from Bb diminished

Every degree of this scale builds a diminished seventh, because the scale repeats every minor third. There are only three of these scales altogether, and each holds two diminished sevenths whose eight notes are the whole scale.

What to play Bb diminished over

The chords on Bb whose every note this scale contains, biggest first. The largest of them is the one that pins the scale down: over Bbdim7 there is nothing in Bb diminished that can sound wrong.

Every scale on every root is on the scale index, and every chord on the chord index. Where the shapes and the theory come from is on the about page.

Midi Settings

7.5
Play Style
One pass of the pick from the lowest string up, everything left ringing.
Instrument
350
150

Style

Shows each chord the way this style would voice it, and marks which of its alternatives belong to the idiom.

Layout

Left Handed Mode