C diminished 7th

Today's guitar chord of the day is C diminished7. This chord has its root on the A string, a few days ago we played an alternative diminished 7th inversion with a root on the E string.

Diminished chords can also be written as C diminished, C dim, C° or C°7. A diminished triad has only 3 notes whilst the diminished 7th has four, however you're usually pretty safe playing a diminished 7th chord in place of all diminished chords if you want.

Diminished 7th chords have an interesting and really useful property: they're made up of four equal minor 3rd intervals (3 semitones). This means that every note in the chord is a potential root note. you can move this chord up 3 frets on the guitar and it will still be A diminished 7th. You can keep moving this chord up 3 frets a time and it will stay A diminished 7th.

 C diminished 7th has these notes: C, Eb, Gb, Bbb (A)

You can also take any of the chord notes to be the root note. So we can also call this chord:

C diminished 7th
Eb diminished 7th
Gb diminished 7th
A diminished 7th

Have a look at our previous diminished chord for some more examples where to use these guitar chords.

C diminished 7th can also be thought of as B7b9.

 Tune in tomorrow for another guitar chord of the day!