Music Theory -The Diminished Scale 

3 years later and this fantastic lesson pops up. This helps clear things up for sure. Never to late to say thank you Rick.

We are blessed with the best teacher in the World ! Thanks again Rick !

60 seconds of watching your movie gives me months of practice pleasure and a hundred new ideas. Thank you for sharing all your knowledge! Everytime you make something difficult easy to understand.

I need ten years of guitar playing to digest all of this

Best explanation of what it is right off the bat. In the first few sentences you cut right to the heart of the matter. No one else on RU-vid did this. They meandered and meandered and made it difficult. Thank you.

Rick Beato is a lovely human. Thank you for sharing your knowledge. 🙏

The diminished scale is amazing for making psychotic and suspenseful melodies if you use the right instruments like for example a music box

I had a little trouble following the first couple patterns until I realized the pattern repeats every 3 frets, while Rick keeps saying move it up 4 frets. It's a 4 fret pattern, but it repeats if you keep moving up 3 at a time. That is, start on 5, then start on 8, then start on 11, etc. The first finger goes to where the 4th finger was, so to speak.

Nice melodic ideas, especially the use of wider intervals! Thanks for the video!

Sounds a lot like king crimson! Awesome

That was Awesome !!! Thank you Rick !!!

Thank you for sharing your knowledge., I am so glad to have discovered you Rick!

Thanks for all great content Rick, you're a great teacher!

You're extremely helpful and a great teacher, thank you rick

All of Beato's vids are wicked awesome. Im thinking this video should have 10x the views. Listen to some of those licks. so cool and super melodic. Very nice. Thanks for the help !!!

Great teacher! Love your content Rick! Always had a fascination with dark sounding chords,dissonance and just unusual awkward sounding chords and melodies. When I was at college I think I annoyed people because it would be all I played 😂. Then I discovered bands like opeth that use a lot of unusual chords and have a dark but beautiful sound. Then started to dabble into atonality and even serialism,I just loved how unconventional it was and that most music is made to resolve to be pleasant to the ear and this played against the hype. Music is meant to evoke a lot of emotion but it's always the same emotions,a lot of mainstream music won't make you feel uncomfortable and unsettled as these genres,although over time your ears come to accept it and this becomes normal to you and still uncomfortable to others. So what I'm saying is I appreciate learning more from someone who knows how to put it into context and what people don't realize is,diminished scales,augmented scales,chromatism,atonality etc doesn't always have to some uncomfortable either. If you use a tiny bit of it sparingly in a short passage of a normal song with regular chords it can sound beautiful too :) as long as you don't stay on the notes that are uncomfortable and just glide over them. Probably bored you to death reading this 😂 but yeah thank you for the inspiration and great content ☺️

Thank God for the internet! I figured I would do a study on Diminished scales and where to use them, and when I searched RU-vid, this video came up. Thanks for breaking the theory down for me. I'll have to watch this a few more times, but there were some real nuggets in here. For example, I had no idea that the names of the scales were tonic and dominant diminished...

that etude's a thing of beauty

A LOT OF HUMM AND BUZZ FOR A MAN OF YOUR MEANS AND TASTES!! WHAT GIVES??!!

Great lesson, thanks!

Hey, instead of just giving rick accolades lets everyone who appreciates these fantastic videos support his work by buying his merch and his books at his website. I am going to buy the Beato book again in the new tab form just to support him. The musical training he offers is gold!

Thanks Rick! Outstanding!👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼🎸🎼

I just noticed. Congratulations on 3M subscribers. 🤙🏼

1:28 onward sounds so much like a Meshuggah solo.

1:00 - Sounds sooooo good!

Thanks for this series of videos! The focus on diminished scales made me think of Ron Jarzombek, and his 12 tone row work with his proggiest metal band Blotted Science, you might want to check out his video for Oscillation Cycles.

beautiful. thanks for this!

Thank you for this..Love all the diminished scale and modes....:-)Allen Holdsworth did a lot of this...Blessings to all..:-)

Thank you for this video!

Very impressive!

Love it!

Just bought the Beato book..Amazing!!!!!..Thanks for sharing all this information. Your the best teacher!!!!

Really enjoying your videos Rick - great job and thanks for sharing!

amazing lesson

Thank you!

Thanks for all the help man ! Hello from mash!

Just great!

Terima kasih master Rick, video2 mu sangat menginspirasi cara bermusik saya

thank you!

Jobim uses a lot the dominante b9 13 chord. Now I know where he got it from.

hi rick..once again brilliant video. can you please do one on the octatonic scale with reference to how its used in music specific to millitary in film scores.

thank u mr

you kick butt sir. 👍

sick licks

Rick, you should really repost this stuff, it’s excellent for application and fingering options which can be confusing, perfect for jazz, metal, also country.. I guarantee people missed this topic. Thanks

Your amazing!

These sound like every murder scene in Matlock. Love it.

Rick, great stuff. Do you have transcriptions of all those cool diminished runs? I want to add them to my practice routine. I don't believe they are in your RU-vid Transcription book, which I am going to purchase anyway (I already have the Beato Book).

That sounds sick tbh

Okay, I struggle with this stuff so I had to write it down and go over it many times. Can some verify if the following is correct or not? I'm trying to come up with the triads that Rick states at around 4:45: * We're talking about Dominant Diminished scale, also called the half-whole diminished, on account of its order of intevals from the starting note. (There is also the whole-half Diminished or "Fully Diminished" scale, which seems less commonly used) * The formula for the half-whole diminished is, half, whole, half, whole, half, whole, half, whole. * In key of A, that gives us a scale of : A, Bb, C, C#, Eb, E, F#, G, A * We construct chords from the 3rd notes of scales, which taken from above gives us A, C, Eb and F#. So that gets me that far, I now have a series of notes that match the roots of chords that Rick describes as being associated with this scale (A maj, A min, A Lydian, C maj, C minor, C Lydian, Eb etc etc) But how does he then get to major, minor and Lydian flavours of chords starting with those roots? I'm sorry for be the dumb one.

Hi Rick. Just a question: Would the new standard tuning proposed by Robert Fripp make a lot easier to play those fourths and 7ths of the diminished scale?

Awesome

Nick, you should REALLY do a video on Scriabins tonal language.

I love the Octatonic so much, great vid!

Damn! I understand!

I recognise that from a pink panther movie, when Peter runs in through a room an falls out a window and in to a river. There is an opera singer doing that first thing you played on the keyboard.

Rick, thank you, I just recently discovered your videos and really like the content. Your videos seem to be right at the level I need to be learning music theory to grow and challenge myself. Please forgive me if you’ve covered this already, but is there a way to get transcriptions or, for my less accomplished site reading students the, I don’t really like saying the word, tablature, of these lessons individually, or are they all contained in one larger volume?

i love these

Your work appreciated, RB. The only thing about dim scales is that they can sound really aseptic and devoid of feeling, if you get my drift. More like acrobatics than emotion. Worth knowing for sure, but only usable for microseconds. Thanks

Good stuff, I've been brushing up hardcore on Jazz styles and have been using a lot of the more advanced theory with my playing. I eventually plan to take this knowledge to bluegrass and folk, maybe something on the banjo

What are the exact tones of the poly-chord at 13:10? Jim :-)

so when can you play a diminished scale over a dominant? it always confuses me

Question: When you did the Bb tonic dim scale (9:43), you said it's W-H-W-H-W-H-W-H. Since we are using Bb as the example, what would you call the 7th degree since all the musical alphabet is used up? So it would be: Bb - C - Db - Eb - Fb - Gb - Abb - ??? - Bb

I watched the robben ford masterclass vid on this scale and he starts with the semitone. I realized that it’s a half step down from where you start but I found it confusing to visualize the pattern. Does it matter where you start other than for sake of where the tonic is?

What is the plugin that keeps moving in the back?

isn t sound like king crimson level five or some other songs as well

Was looking for some outside sounds. Just started to learn diminished scales.I thought it might somehow be applied to different chords other than dominant 7.Larry Carlton and Robben Ford seem to prefer a half step whole step diminished scale outline over a whole step half step sequence.Whats the difference?

Hey rick have you heard of shawn lane. I'm curious because it seems nobody talks about him

So using those 8 dim 7 arpeggio over one chord, could i also use 8 different dim7 chords (shapes i guess) over one chord?

Ah I used to be scared of this scale🙈 I called it the Paranoia scale

The Devils note

Thank you for making this excellent video. By Lydian, do you mean Major #4 arpeggio? So you're adding a raised 4th in the major arpeggio? Otherwise, wouldn't it just be a Major 7th arpeggio - IE; Root - Major 3rd - Perfect 5th - Major 7th? Thank you.

Hey Rick (or anyone else): My friend played a scale that I cannot find anywhere, curious if anyone knows what it is. It's essentially a Dominant Diminished scale with a natural 4 and no 6 (1 b2 b3 3 4 5 b7). Anyone?!

Tabs Rick!

Question on the etude ... Did you write that in midi ? or actually play it ? Very cool either way :) yummy riffs

Sometimes I wish I wasn’t a self taught pianist. I’m a great pianist but music theory is a bitch to learn by yourself.

*Hears NPR theme in the distance*

Came here after hearing mishas solo in the new periphery song - Blood Eagle

Sir. Do you know what scales usuallay used in G-Funk Hip-hop?

Is this what Opeth used at the end of Moon Above Sun Below?

.....When you do these Hans Zimmer/Miles Davis chord progression segments used for Tom Clancy movie scores....You should bring in your son Dylan for comic relief.

amazing job ! but you omit the +9 ? why ?

Does anyone know if the intro to Cliffs of Dover by Eric Johnson is a diminished scale?

Diminished Scale reminds of The Simpsons's theme song

What's the chord underneath that in the beginning around 1:30?

Interesting but why the distortion nad the organ?

Beato. I have question. I knew this kick ads guitar player. Everyone thought he was mentally incarcerated by the diminished skull. He said he could play ANY style Jazz,Rock, Country, Bluegrass,Swahili folk...Etc. all with diminished. I missed my lesson that day... could you apply this as aforementioned. Thanks

Here's a chord for our times: Covi/D

Watched the whole video...Didn't understand anything 😭if possible, please teach it like you're teaching it to a kid, Rick

Is Larry Carlton into this?.... I keep hearing his sound here.

I played the lick then move it up 4 frets... *failure*

Is that locrian i hear?

15:15 !!

What is a tonic ?? Anybody want to help me?

For the record... A Lydian over Bb is a naughty, dissonant, born in Zappa's kitchen, hoop jumper chord. Just sayin'.

2:25. If some diminished licks are hard to play on your guitar, there's a simple solution: tune your guitar in such a way that each open-string tone is separated by a tritone interval. For example: E5 A#4 E4 A#3 E3 A#2 It also makes it very easy to play up and down a diminished scale, whether dominant or tonic. 6 5 3 2 0 5 3 2 0 5 3 2 0 5 3 2 0 5 3 2 0 5 3 2 0

Is it possible to be a music nerd? LOL!

what does it mean to play in 7ths anybody

you have incredible videos but you fly through concepts so quickly that i can’t understand any of it.

you soind kinda paganini