Chord Colors

F Blues Diminished scale

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About the F Blues Diminished scale

F 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 F Minor Blues with the fourth lowered.

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

In F Blues Diminished, the open strings sound A and B. A guitarist finds the lowest F at the 1st fret of the low E string. With a capo at the first fret, F Blues Diminished can be played with E-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 1
Position 2fr 4
Position 3fr 5
Position 4fr 7
Position 5fr 8
Position 6fr 11

Notes and intervals

1FFRoot
2AbA♭Minor 3rd
3AAMajor 3rd
4CbC♭Diminished 5th
5CCPerfect 5th
6EbE♭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.

F Blues Diminished scale on guitar shown as colored note dots
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