I've always been a harmonic minor man, but i've been looking to work on using new ideas. I,m really getting into diminished, well one day i was trying to fuck around with it and i noticed it is a pentatonic scale. Is this right, it only has five notes, i could have swore reading somewhere it has more. Could someone help me clear this up? Sorry if this is stupid, i'm really mediocre with my theory.

This is how I'm playing it:
d
a
f
C---------------7
G---------6--9---
D---5--8---------

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yes, those are diminished arpeggios, if you play a note every 3 frets. since you have a sharped 7th in the harmonic minor you get that diminished shaped woven into it.

Notice he said it was an arpeggio. The diminished scale comes in a couple different flavors. The whole-half and the half-whole with both scales containing 8 tones.

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Whole-Half




------------------2-3-5-6-----
---------1-2-4-5--------------
0-1-3-4-----------------------

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HOLY CRAP! that whole half sounds so cool, when they said whole half i didn't know what the fuck they were talking about, thanks for the example. I would have asked but I already felt dumb for this question in the first place. Oh well, so what does the other one look like?

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------------------2-4-5-7-----
---------1-3-4-6--------------
0-2-3-5-----------------------

But it's easier, to me anyway, to play it like this:

--------------------4-5-7-----
-----------3-4-6-7------------
0-2-3-5-6---------------------

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I love octotonic scales
I can be wrong, but I think the scales are used with the wrong names. whole-half I think means you first of all take a whole step and then half one step, so the one johnmansley posted will then be the whole-half and the other will be the half-whole. Tell me if I am wrong.

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nah that corecdt i think, on most scale site their show whole-half AND half-whole, doesnt matter cuz the patter is still the same.

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yeah Ki3m is right about that.
And yeah 7STrWrlord. play whole-half the way johnmansley plays it. when you play it that way it kind of opens up the playability and you can SEE the scales uses better
yes diminished scales are very fun. i write all my riffs with phrygian dominant and half-whole and whole-half. out of curiosity? what scales do you guys use, or do you go chromatic?

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I do the chromatic thing for a lot of my real thrashy riffs, and then harmonic minor for solos and leads. I'm really anxious to start using these octatonics that weve been discussing.

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for easy and fast octotonic i found a three note, four string run, check it out


E-------------------------------12-13-15
B---------------------12-14-15--------
G-----------12-13-15------------------
D-12-14-15----------------------------

move that up and down by tritonal scale and your in key or move it intervals of H, W, W+H, and so forth (in the octotonic shape) for a jazzier sound

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Wholetone's cool, although that's augmented territory. I often improvise in that, and it has cool doublestopping possibilities...

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i don't really know what your saying. by whole tone do you mean, no semi-tones? what is a doublestop?

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Whole tone refers to the scale intervals. There's no half step intervals only whole step (or tone) as the name implies. A double stop is the act of playing two notes simultaneously.

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oh that sounded alot more complicated

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Jazz conventions:

Whole-half diminished = 1-2-b3-4-b5-#5-6-7. Use on dim7 chords.
E.g. Bdim7 = B-D-F-Ab. Scale = B-C#-D-E-F-G-Ab-A#

Half-whole diminished = 1-2b-b3-3-#4-5-6-b7. Use on 7b9 chords.
E.g. G7b9 = G-B-D-F-Ab. Scale = G-Ab-A#-B-C#-D-E-F.

Notice these 2 scales are the same. Bdim7 is the top 4 notes of G7b9, and is a common sub for G7, esp in key of C minor.

There are only THREE diminished scales; but each of them has EIGHT names: 4 whole-half and 4 half-whole, depending on which note you start from.
Likewise, there are only 3 dim7 chords, each with 4 possible names (not counting enharmonic equivalents), depending on which note you call the root.
B-D-F-Ab = Bdim7 = Ddim7 = Fdim7 = Abdim7 (=G#dim7)

Wholetone = 1-2-3-#4-#5-b7. Use on 7#5, 7b5, 9#5, 9b5 chords.
E.g. G7#5 = G-B-D#-F. Scale = G-A-B-C#-D#-F
(Example: Intro to "You are the sunshine of my life" Stevie Wonder)

There are only TWO wholetone scales. The other one is C-D-E-F#-G#-Bb.

when people write a lot, even if they are right it makes things confusing

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