A#dim — A# diminished chord
Root, minor third and diminished fifth: two stacked minor thirds. The chord built on the seventh degree of a major scale.
- 1 = A#
- b3 = C#
- b5 = E
- Symbol
- A#dim
- Root
- A#
- Quality
- Diminished
- Family
- triad
- Notes
- A# C# E
- Degree formula
1 b3 b5- Semitones from the root
0 3 6- Distinct pitch classes
- 3
- Interval structure
- Stacked from the root: 3 semitones, 3 semitones
- Notation
- Written dim or with a degree sign, for example Cdim or Co.
- Key
- A# · Bb major / G minor key signature
Fingering charts
The library holds 5 fingerings of this chord and all of them are shown, in the library’s own order. Several fingerings of one chord is normal: the same notes can be stopped at different positions and on different strings.
Formula
The chord tones in order from the root, with the interval each one forms above it.
| Degree | Note | Semitones | Interval from the root |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A# | 0 | Perfect unison |
| b3 | C# | 3 | Minor third |
| b5 | E | 6 | Tritone |
Inversions
An inversion is the same set of notes with a different one in the bass. The last column gives the distance of each note above the bass note, in semitones.
| Inversion | Bass note | Degree in the bass | Notes above the bass | Semitones above the bass |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| root position | A# | 1 | A# – C# – E | 0 3 6 |
| first inversion | C# | b3 | C# – E – A# | 0 3 9 |
| second inversion | E | b5 | E – A# – C# | 0 6 9 |
Playable voicings
These shapes were found by searching the fretboard of a standard-tuned guitar (E A D G B E) rather than copied from a chord book. The search allows every string to sound or to be muted, rejects any shape with a muted string between two sounding strings, rejects any shape whose fretted notes span more than four frets (a five-fret window), requires every chord tone to be present, and then sorts what remains with root-position shapes first and the most compact, lowest shapes next. The shapes shown are the first six of that ordering; other orderings are possible at the same frets.
| # | Shape (low string first) | Notes | Degrees | Bass | Span (frets) | Sounding strings |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 6-7-8-6-5-6 | A# E A# C# E A# | 1 b5 1 b3 b5 1 | A# | 3 | 6 |
| 2 | 6-4-2-3-2-6 | A# C# E A# C# A# | 1 b3 b5 1 b3 1 | A# | 4 | 6 |
| 3 | 6-4-2-3-5-6 | A# C# E A# E A# | 1 b3 b5 1 b5 1 | A# | 4 | 6 |
| 4 | 6-4-2-6-2-6 | A# C# E C# C# A# | 1 b3 b5 b3 b3 1 | A# | 4 | 6 |
| 5 | 6-4-2-6-5-6 | A# C# E C# E A# | 1 b3 b5 b3 b5 1 | A# | 4 | 6 |
| 6 | 6-4-8-6-5-6 | A# C# A# C# E A# | 1 b3 1 b3 b5 1 | A# | 4 | 6 |
Shape numbers run from the lowest string to the highest, so the left-hand number is the sixth string (low E) in standard tuning. Multiple shapes are listed because a chord can be voiced several ways, and because a lower position is not always the better sounding one.
Related chords and scales
Related
- ChordA#5 — Power chord
- ChordA#aug — Augmented
- ChordA# — Major
- DegreesBb — degree map
- Neck mapBb — note map
- KeyKey of Bb
- ScaleBb aeolian
- ScaleBb blues scale