Understanding Diminished 7th Chords and How to Improvise Over Them (feat. Adam Levy)

Welcome to episode 182 of the LJS Podcast where today I have special guest Adam Levy on the show to talk about diminished harmony and how to start improvising over diminished 7th chords. If you’ve ever felt confused by diminished chords and how to approach them, consider this a must listen episode.

Listen to episode 182

Have you ever been improvising over a jazz standard and everything was going fine but then suddenly you ran into a big bad scary diminished 7th chord and you just didn’t know what to do?

Well, I’ll be the first to raise my hand and say, yes, diminished chords have often confused me when it comes to improvising. And sometimes I felt very limited with my knowledge and ability of how to improvise over them and what context they were playing.

On today’s episode, I have a very special guest, musician, jazz guitarist, singer-songwriter, Adam Levy, to talk all about diminished theory, diminished harmony, and some tools for how to improvise over them.

In this episode:

1. Adam Levy and his vibrant musical career

2. 4 common diminished harmonic contexts to know

3. Improvising over diminished 7ths starting with the chord tones

4. Thinking of auxilary notes to approach chord tones rather than diminished scales

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Learn Jazz Standards Podcast. If you aren’t already, make sure you are subscribed on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

I look forward to having you join me in the next episode!