Chord Colors

D♯ Blues Diminished scale

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About the D sharp Blues Diminished scale

D sharp Blues Diminished is used for blues and jazz-blues solos. Think of it as a six-note blues scale with a diminished twist. It is D Minor Blues with the fourth lowered.

Its notes are D, F, G, A, A, and C. The formula is 1½ H W H 1½ W.

The open-string notes A and G all sit inside this scale. A guitarist finds the lowest D at the 6th fret of the A string. Capo the first fret to play D Blues Diminished with D-shape fingerings.

Positions

Playable shapes for this scale up the neck. Tap any note to hear it.

6-position system

6 four-fret boxes, one per scale degree, each a single hand position with almost no shifting. The jazz and classical way, from William Leavitt's Berklee method.

Position 1fr 2
Position 2fr 3
Position 3fr 5
Position 4fr 6
Position 5fr 9
Position 6fr 11

Notes and intervals

1D#D♯Root
2F#F♯Minor 3rd
3GGMajor 3rd
4AADiminished 5th
5A#A♯Perfect 5th
6C#C♯Minor 7th
Steps1½ H W H 1½ W
Semitones3-1-2-1-3-2
Degrees1 3 3 5 5 7

Shapes

Chromatic

CC♯D♭DD♯E♭EFF♯G♭GG♯A♭AA♯B♭B

Circle of Fifths

CGDAEBF♯G♭C♯D♭G♯A♭D♯E♭A♯B♭F

Related scales

Blues Diminished in other keys

Modes

The same notes, starting on a different note.

Embed this scale

Paste the snippet into a lesson page, a blog or a forum post. The card links back here.

Eb Blues Diminished scale on guitar shown as colored note dots
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