Half-Diminished Chords Deep Dive 

Need a whole section on my bookshelf for all these books!

Wonderful lesson Jeremy - Thank you

nice and interesting topic; I love the sound of these half diminished 7/minor 6 chords. I use them frequently in major, borrowing from minor.

I play Barry Harris’s scale “the minor’s five”, not the three scales Jeremey suggested. It’s the only scale that keeps the chord tones on the beat, it has eight tones. Barry discovered it in the playing of Charlie Parker. It’s highly melodic.

great video dude. I like that you are doing more advanced theory like this. I find it hard to find channels that are for non "beginner" level. I've never really understood the half diminished chord so as soon as you started describing it i paused the video and played around with it on my piano. I was one of the freaks that was raising the 7 on a dim chord. I can see it both ways now, thanks. this is the first video of yours I've seen but I am excited to check out more. I would say that it would be nice to see what chord progressions you are going through in the examples you play but that is my only note and i understand if its too much work too add them in post. cheers

Thank you, Maestro. Always great info. Loved the tip on Debussy. All the best. 🌹🌹🌹🌹Very thorough lesson. I love my "cop-out" minor 9b5=mode 2 harmonic major=no melodic minor math.😁

That was really useful, Jeremy. I love the sound of the half diminished. They don't seem to cover it much in the classical curriculum.... At least not in my experience.

Great to see a dive on this particular chord type! I like the usage of it like in "Night and Day" or "Christmas Time is Here", where you play a descending turnaround that starts on a half diminished chord a tritone a way from the root of the I and goes down chromatically to a ii-V back to the I. I wonder if there is a name for this type of turnaround?

Hi Jeremy great video as always, this compliments your book very nicely. I have a question that I thought you might be able to touch on some day. I feel like I am always “voice leading” when I comp, but when I listen to others I here them jump around and make leaps and lines. When is it appropriate to jump and shift in your comping, and when should you strictly voice lead? Thanks for all your content.

Nice, always great to see different peoples take on these pesky chords 😂. Just like to share another possible way of creating 5 note voicings for half diminished chords that harkens back to the idea that they’re really minor 6th chords, and that’s to create voicings from every other note of what’s sometimes called the minor 6 pentatonic scale, ex: C, D, Eb, G, A (just a major pentatonic with a flat 3), a minor 3rd away. So for example, to voice A half dim, we can play every other note of C minor 6 pentatonic, a la C, Eb, A, D, G. The cool thing too is that this works starting on any note of the minor 6 pentatonic so this gives us 5 different voicings, ex: C, Eb, A, D, G or Eb, A, D, G, C, etc.

Debussy Liszt Gillespie in one awesome lesson - nice!

I've understood that the name half-diminished chord comes from the fact that when contrasted to a minor seventh chord, only the interval of a fifth is diminished whereas in the °7 chord the interval of a fifth and the m7 are both diminished (therefore fully-diminished). Don't know about the common practice in the US, but here in Finland the °7 chord is also very carefreeingly called when translated; a fully-diminished (seventh) chord in everyday use😊.

Nice! Barry Harris uses the Harmonic minor on the whole minor 2-5 .

How bad would it be to learn Jazz on a 61 semi-weighted keyboard if I already can play other genres well on a standard piano?

Thanks, informative video! Can you explain what is happening to the Bb in the Dminor chord at about 12:30? You are playing the B as a natural, which is not in the D minor scale. Is that a 6/9 chord instead of Dmmaj7/Dm7 ? And why is the 6 natural in that case?

How can I buy your book?