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People play diminished there all time. Not sure what the controversy is all about.
Quite a nice line. He seems to be playing the harmonic minor there for that diminished sound going to Am.
If you like it, try it in other contexts — meaning in other tunes, try using the same sound in the bar before the ii chord. And if you don’t like it, don’t.
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04-08-2026 12:56 PM
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I didn’t perceive any controversy. Just a couple of mildly condescending messages earlier on. I’m sorry I’m still learning.
Originally Posted by pamosmusic
Anyway, thanks ? for the info. I thought the Bb dim can be used to resolve to a B minor, half a tone up. It’s good to know it can be used to lead half a step down as well.
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Oh yeah. Three killer uses for the diminished: Originally Posted by Grigoris
I didn’t perceive any controversy. Just a couple of mildly condescending messages earlier on. I’m sorry I’m still learning.
Anyway, thanks ? for the info. I thought the Bb dim can be used to resolve to a B minor, half a tone up. It’s good to know it can be used to lead half a step down as well.
1. The most common … leading tone resolves a half step up.
2. biii diminished resolves a half step down to the ii chord.
3. biii or better put #ii diminshed resolves to the tonic chord … so D#o7 resolves to C … often C\E. The enharmonic equivalent is more common … #iv resolves to I … like F#dim to C in bar 6 of a blues.
You can hunt around to find theory reasons why the latter two (and a half) uses work so well and you’ll probably find threads on this forum arguing about it. But they work because they voicelead well.
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There are 3 diminished scales, and each scale includes four dim.7 /7b9 chords, so you can play the scale over all these chords and their relative altered m7b5 chords. e.g., Em7b5/A7b9, Gm7b5/C7b9, etc.
Bb-C-Db-Eb-E-F#-G-A
Chords: Bbo7/Dbo7/Eo7/F#o7 = A7b9/C7b9/Eb7b9/F#7b9 (no roots)
B-C#-D-E-F-G-Ab-Bb
Chords: Bo7/Do7/Fo7/Abo7 = Bb7b9/C#7b9/E7b9/G7b9 (no roots)
C-D-Eb-F-Gb-Ab-A-B
Chords: Co7/Ebo7/Gbo7/Ao7 = B7b9/D7b9/F7b9/Ab7b9 (no roots)
If you're feeling ambitious, there are a lot of interesting diminished scale patterns In Nicholas Slonimsky's Thesaurus:
Slonimsky Curiosities
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You can, but I think the argument folks are generally having is whether or not this is generally how beboppers do it, since that's the sound most people here are generally looking for. Originally Posted by Mick-7
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Beboppers don't really use the diminished scale, do they? Seems like a post bop thing. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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Depends on where you want to place Coltrane in the sub-generic classification. Originally Posted by Mick-7
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Coltrane is his own thing for sure.
Barry had a rant about how Trane didn't really understand harmony. I think this may at least in part because of his treatment of diminished chords.
This is kind of a classic Barry rant that used to get the jazz kiddies up in arms, or worse still started to parrot themselves as a replacement for having a personality of their own. We get shocked by that sort of thing because to us it's the sainted Coltrane, while to Barry, Trane was a contemporary who dropped into his workshop in Detroit back in the 50s and played with his old buddies.
For others, it was an exciting new sound that they wanted to get into. Over time it became part of the syllabus and now everyone has to learn the Moment's Notice diminished lick. Which I can't actually play. Don't judge me.
Not that Barry is necessarily the arbiter of what is bop and what isn't - I think everything apart from Bud and Bird was a step down for him and he was pretty sniffy about the second generation guys (of which he was one himself) - but I definitely hear Trane as having a profoundly different approach. As Wynton points out - he wasn't a natural; at bop. He had to find his own way.
That said, Giant Steps is rammed full of the sort of standard bebop figures that you'd learn at a Barry class.
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Yeah Coltrane is definitely his own thing.
I guess my response to Mick was a bit tongue in cheek though since whether some player or other is or isn't part of a particular subgenre of jazz isn't a question likely to preoccupy me.
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I mean it's kind of telling that in his obit for Barry in the Nation, Ethan Iverson chose to focus on Barry's use of the diminished chords.
As with all historicising there's some generalisations, and at the time it annoyed me - I felt Barry was about so much more.
But it's true enough. Post bop players did largely abandon that sound. It's the world of Chopin and song sheet harmony that Barry developed into his own thing - not the general run of 'progress' in jazz at that time.
The Greatest Teacher of America’s Great Art Form | The Nation
(Edit: argghhh, paywall.)
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I mean you do sort of make it sound like telling the difference between Trane and the 50's bebop style is like a metal fan splitting hairs on Reddit.... Which I don't think is quite true lol. Originally Posted by James W
Oh god, maybe it is in the wider scheme of things.Last edited by Christian Miller; 04-09-2026 at 06:59 AM.
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I don't know why you're talking about diminished stuff, harmonic minor's all the rage nowadays, you know.
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50s bebop style? I thought that most or at least much of that would be considered hard bop. But - who knows? I guess it can be interesting considering music from multiple perspectives, including whether or to what extent a player can be grouped along with other contemporary musicians, even if they are very different and stand out. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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You get the first gen bop guys - Bird, Diz and possibly Monk and Charlie Christian. There’s a lot of people in the sort of penumbra like Mary Lou Williams and Cannonball - bop curious but not exactly bop players. Originally Posted by James W
Bud is an early adopter … but heavily influenced by Bird.
You then get the second generation - Brownie, Stitt, Dexter Gordon etc etc. so at this point basically it’s a stylistic bottleneck in the early 50s and everyone starts copying Bird, except the older guys who already have their style locked in (and even then some are influenced.)
It’s really obvious if you’ve checked out the pre war music, maybe not so much if that’s your year zero.
Cootie Williams said everyone sounded the same after bird and while I don’t quite agree you can see where he’s coming from. There’s a common practice in terms of note choices. Players still sound individual because of the way they play.
(You do also get the Prez school a bit with horn players who aren’t so changes based. Art Pepper, Miles etc.)
You get hard bop in the later 50s … It’s not like there’s a big dividing line between them. But in terms of the language most of them are still heavily rooted in birds vocabulary. That starts to shift with the late 50s.
I mean most people are still playing some variant of bop at this point. Ornette is lol. But I think with both Ornette and Trane we can listen to them on those early records and hear that they aren’t playing with the same toolset as the others. Trane doesn’t really sound like a bop player at all on the Miles stuff. (Miles more of the Prez school himself so isn’t quite doing the bop thing either. He didn’t even when he was with Bird.)
By the 60s we are no longer in an era of common practice to my ears.
(IMO a common practice emerges later in the wake of the jazz education boom as a stylistic consolidation of the approaches of specific figures in 60s post-bop.)
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In that context Barry is actually his own thing as well. He was quite leery about the second gen 8th note and II V style and wanted to get closer to Bud and Bird. So he developed his own school which is different from the second gen/hard bop thing even though he played on those records.
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Personally I disagree, part of the dim scale was used in many Bebop phrases. Originally Posted by Mick-7
It was part of one of Charlie Parker's common phrases.
"Thomas Owens" lists over 300 uses of Parker using this Dim phrase (above).
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hardbop introduced the funky 16th. that wasnt barry's thing. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
re: coltrane
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Hit "Esc" on your keyboard as soon as the webpage loads and it'll freeze the page so you can read it (usually works but not always). Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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That's a F7b9 arpeggio, could be Bb harmonic minor.... 1 point for ragman. Originally Posted by GuyBoden
Personally I disagree, part of the dim scale was used in many Bebop phrases.
It was part of one of Charlie Parker's common phrases.
"Thomas Owens" lists over 300 uses of Parker using this Dim phrase (above).
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Yeah lots of things can be part of a diminished scale if you squint hard enough. Originally Posted by Mick-7
That's a F7b9 arpeggio, could be Bb harmonic minor.... 1 point for ragman.
That’s a diminshed arpeggio — probably standing in for F7b9 — resolving to F — probably the fifth of Bb major.
That the notes technically belong to a single diminished scale certainly doesn’t mean that’s a useful way of organizing it in your own playing
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Works perfectly. Lots of points for good ol' Mick Originally Posted by Mick-7
(I don't think my one was very serious. Although there was a video knocking about where someone investigated what a whole handful of famous players used for a 2-5-1 in the 50's. They all used harmonic minor apparently).
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Can't say I agree with this. If Trane doesn't sound like a bop player on the Miles stuff, what does? And BTW when you say 'bop' it's unclear whether you mean bebop or any of the other bops like hard-bop. If you mean bebop well, perhaps, but if you mean any kind of -bop, then I totally disagree. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
And as for Miles not doing so when he was with Bird, that sounds a bit crazy to me. I mean, Miles was pioneering on those records - or is that just my ignorance of the Prez school?
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We need a taxonomy of bops. Originally Posted by James W
Also not being a history guy, I would guess that Coltrane sounds like bop to us because he’s become so much a part of the language since Giant Steps. I can see how at the time it would’ve seemed like more of a departure.
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Yeah I get that. Just wonder how Christian would categorise the first great quintet stuff (if categorise we must)... Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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Yeah I dunno - I feel Giant Steps is a bit atypical for Trane. It feels very set piece-y to me, people have said it's an etude, and that's how I hear it. But everyone picked up on it of course. I heard Trane play ballads first, so I still think of him as the beautiful melodies and blues guy. Which he was as well. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
I do hear him differently now than when I was listening to him back in my twenties. Back then, Trane WAS jazz to me. I couldn't really understand why many musuicians seemed to dislike him back in the day. I hear it much more now, I can understand why Miles had a sot of weird relationship with his playing haha. He does sound quite weird when you've listened to a load of 50s sax players. A lot of it is down to the phrasing. But he seems to making music in a different way too. Searching for a melody sometimes, blasting up and down the saxophone other times.Last edited by Christian Miller; 04-09-2026 at 04:57 PM.
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