The Half Diminished Chord

This page is old. Please visit Understanding Diminished Chords for a better explanation.

The Half Diminished Chord is found when building a Diatonic Chord off the Major Scale's 7th degree.

It's got a very tense sound with a ton of character. Let's look at how it's played, and what we can do with it!

You may see this chord notated as either "Em7b5", or "Eø7", or even just "Eø ", using E as an example. A little confusing, unfortunately. In general - just try to remember that the circle with a line through it indicates a Half Diminished Chord.

As you should know from your understanding of Diatonics - this chord is built off the 7th Scale Degree of the Major Scale, and the 2nd Degree of the Minor.

In the image below, we can see that the chords intervals consist of a Root, a Minor 3rd, Diminished 5th, and a Minor 7th.

Or: 1-b3-b5-b7.

It asks the question... since all the intervals besides the Root are flattened, how does this chord differ from the fully Diminished Seventh Chord? In fact, the intervals of the Diminished 7th are: 1-b3-b5-bb7. A double flat! We will cover that chord at a later date.

So, how can we use this unusual chord?

The most common occurrence of this chord is probably in a iiø7-V7-i7 (The jazz 2-5-1) progression.

However, in general it often sees use being treated like an alternate Dominant (V) Chord. They introduce a strong tension that can be resolved by moving the Root a half step up to the Major Tonic, or a full step down to the Minor Tonic.

They even get used in a non-Diatonic fashion this way, where they step outside the key but provide a strong resolution towards the next chord. This will be elaborated on much more, in the future.

Now you should have a solid understanding of this chord, and it's place within music. Writing some chord progressions for yourself that include this sound is a powerful way to get even more comfortable with it!

If you keep your eyes open, you'll see this chord making an appearance all over the place in certain genres.