3 pentatonics for half-diminished chords

Playing over half-diminished chords can seem daunting, strange or unfamiliar and you may not know what to do. But fear not, there are plenty of ways to navigate this chord type.

Of course, you could play some scales such as a Locrian or, even better, you could play the second mode of the Harmonic minor (that’s the Locrian with a natural 6th). However, a different option (and a funkier, more modern sounding choice) is to play pentatonics over half-diminished chords. So let’s take a look a three pentatonics that you could play.

This first pentatonic option is great because it’s fairly simple and easy to get started with it. It’s basically a standard minor pentatonic but with a flattened 5th. As an example, let’s use B minor pentatonic, which is usually B, D, E, F#, A (F# is the 5th note of B minor). So then when we flatten the 5th, we get F instead. This is perfect because when we play this pentatonic starting from the root (using B-7b5 as our example chord (-7b5 is a half-diminished chord and often the symbol of a circle with a line diagonally through it is used)), it highlights the distinct chord tones of a half-diminished chord, that’s the root (B), minor 3rd (D), 11th (E), flattened 5th (F) and minor 7th (A). Plus it has a nice bluesy sound, as it’s nearly a blues scale. Great! Let’s take a look at the next pentatonic option.

This pentatonic option is slightly more challenging to implement, although the concept is essentially the same as the first. This time, we use the minor 6th pentatonic as the starting point. If you haven’t come across the minor 6th pentatonic before, it’s basically the same as the standard minor pentatonic, but rather than including the minor 7th it’s swapped out for the 6th. Using B minor pentatonic as an example, instead of B, D, E, F#, A, the A (minor 7th) is replaced with G# (natural 6th) so we have B, D, E, F#, G#. So that’s the minor 6th pentatonic and I highly recommend practising it and using it, as it sounds great!

Now back to the half-diminished chord. Similar to the first option, this time using the minor 6th pentatonic, we can flatten the 5th (the F# to F natural). This gives us our pentatonic which is B, D, E, F, G#. Keen eyed musicians will notice that the notes make up a diminished arpeggio, with the addition of E. And indeed, this pentatonic will have a strong diminished sound when played.

This is certainly my favourite pentatonic choice over half-diminished chords, although it’s slightly harder to get to grips with at the start. But once you’ve practised it and you get your head around it, it has a fantastic, modern, funky sound over those half-diminished chords. In the last option I mentioned the minor 6th pentatonic, and this is simply that. The tricky part, however, is that you’re not playing the pentatonic the starts on the root note of the chord - you’re playing the minor 6th pentatonic that starts on the minor 3rd of the chord. Using B-7b5 again for the example, you’re not going to play a B minor 6th pentatonic, you actually need to play the minor 6th pentatonic that starts on the minor 3rd of the chord, which is D. So you would play D minor 6th pentatonic. I’ll do another example just to clarify. Let’s take E-7b5. The minor 3rd of the chord is G, so you would play G minor 6th pentatonic. Again this can be tricky and might take some practice, but it’s worth it.

Thanks for reading this post, I hope it was helpful for you. Be sure to check out any other posts that take your fancy and the shop for my improvisation textbooks.