Weekly Workout: Diminished Scales and Arpeggios

Learn how to play and solo with diminished-seventh arpeggios, scales, and patterns. Diminished chords and scales are among the most piquant and beautiful sounds available to improvising guitarists in all genres of acoustic music—and also among the most misunderstood. From a harmonic standpoint, diminished-seventh (dim7 or o7) chords often appear as passing chords, creating transitions between two more stable chords such as minor and major. Tackle a number of diminished chord and scale patterns, which provide an excellent technical workout for both hands, and create seamless lead lines over diminished and dominant-seventh chords.