Diminished Harmony

In this lesson, we will focus on really digging into diminished harmony. This is an important skill, especially if you want to learn to play cocktail piano and re-harmonize songs. There are also many cool improvisation ideas that we will end up covering in this 2-part series.

In this second part we will cover some usage of the diminished chord for improvisation. We will also apply diminished replacement techniques to song snippets "I Could Write A Book" and "Have You Met Miss Jones?". We will end by covering the Barry Harris diminished approach technique and apply it to a snippet of "The Days Of Wine And Roses."

In this lesson we will cover four important uses of diminished harmony: 1) Diminished chord reharmonization, 2) Harmonizing melodies using diminished chords, 3) Using diminished scales for improvisation and 4) Diminished and Slash Chords. These four techniques are practical because they are most often used in live situations and are important for any gigging musician to know. We will use the song "It Could Happen To You" as an example.