Slide Rules

The chronicle of my journey into the genuflecting rabbit hole of pedal steel guitar

I found a couple of shapes for diminished and augmented chords today. For those of you that dont know what these are, they are chords made up of equal intervals.
A diminished chord is 1 - b3 - b5 - bb7. For example C Eb Gb A(Bbb). Each interval is a minor third.
An augmented chord is 1 - 3 - #5 e.g. C E G#. Each interval is a major third.

Because these chord types are symmetrical, i.e. they are made up of the same interval repeated, any of the notes in the chord can be considered the root.

So the diminished chord above can be C°, Eb°, Gb°, or A° (° = diminished). And the augmented chord can be any of C+, E+ or G#+ augmented (+ = augmented).

What’s the use of these chords?

Mainly substitutions for dominant 7 chords.
Diminished chords make great 7b9 chords. A G# diminished is a substitution for a G7b9.

How do you play them
Diminished, very easy strings 3 4 5 6 RKL
Augmented 3 4 5 6 A B RKL

I might go into substitutions more in another post but, try the chords out. Move the diminished ones around three frets at a time and the augmented ones four frets and see what they sound like.

I think i jumped the gun a bit cos i was so excited about my minor chord progress and pentatonic stuff that i forgot to post the major chord shapes i’ve been using.

In G:

3rd fret, no pedals/levers. string 3 4 5 6 8
6th fret A lever and RKL string 3 4 5 6
10th fret A and B string 3 4 5 6

In my last post I talked about the minor chord shapes I’d learnt.

It’s the 11th fret one that’s really interested me. I come from a 6 string guitar backround and have spent most of my playing days going up and down pentatonic/blues scales.
These scales dont present themselves to readily to a novice steel player like myself.

In the 11th fret with dropped Es, you get a minor chord on strings 6-5-4-3, being G, Bb, D, G. On the two top strings you get 1 - F, 2 - D. the b7 and 5th in the scales.

Altogether you get:

string:     6  5  4  3  2  1
scale note: 1 b3  5  1  5 b7

And the pentatonic/blues scale is 1 b3 4 b5 5 7, so that’s part of the way there with the bar in just one place.

Bring the pedals and levers into play (Es stay dropped):

A lever puts the b3 to a 4 on the 5th string. Bingo
B lever just puts the 1 to a b2. Not so useful
C lever is good! It lets you do a bend from the 5 to the b7 on the 4th string and the b3 to 4 on the 5th.
RKR lever, that drops the 2 string a semitone, drops the 5 to a b5.

Now we’re in business! without moving the bar we can go all the way up a pentatonic minor/blues scale and drop in a few bends, without moving the bar.

Jonny also showed me some minor chord shapes that i’ve been practising.
In G min they are 1st fret with B amd C down, 6th fret with B and 11th fret with dropped Es.

well, i got my steel back from Jonny who showed me a few licks and tricks and how to move between minor chords. he’s put my pedals A-B-C so i now have to learn everything I knew again. put some new strings on there too so she’s sounding a lot brighter. I think I’m gonna start washing my hands before i play from now on..

Those top two strings are a funny pair. It took me a few days after i got teh guitar before i realised they were out of sequence and i just sort of ignored them to start off with. But they are useful, if difficult to use. They are great for dropping melody notes into arpeggios. In most positions, the 1st string plays the scale note between the 3rd and 4th adn the 2nd between the 4th and 5th. but they are difficult to get to. and to block for that matter. Jonny generally seems to pick those top two strings with his 2nd finger..think i’m gonna go for that technique

Slide Rules

Archives for: February 2009

04/02/09

12:22:19 am Diminshed and Augmented Chords

03/02/09

01:03:10 pm Major Chords

12:59:38 pm Pentatonic/Blues scales

12:51:11 pm Minor Chords

01/02/09

03:47:54 pm