Soloing with dim7 Arpeggios over dim7 Passing Chords

As you can learn from one of the past blogs, one of the 3 ways dim7 chords are used in music, is as a passing chord.
Learn more about the uses of the dim7 chord here.

The Diminished 7th Chord and How To Use It.

While the above blog teaches how to play dim7 chords, and how to use them in rhythm guitar playing and in chord progressions, today’s blog is about soloing over ah dim7 chord used as a passing chord, with dim7 arpeggios.

In order to be able to pull this off, you also need to know the arpeggio fingerings of course.
Good news: because the dim7 chord is a symmetrical chord, one fingering gets you all the chord inversions. (this will make sense when you read the following blog and learn the fingerings)

Here they are:

The Dim7 Arpeggio

Once you got all that under your belt, you are ready for the following improv. lessons.

Say you have following chord progression:

Cmaj7 | C#dim7 | Dm7 | G7

Over the Cmaj7, Dm7 and G7 chords, you could just play:

C, Dm and G chord arpeggios
Cmaj7, Dm7 and G7 chord arpeggios
Any C major scale fingering you know
A minor pentatonic scale

Over the C#dim7 chord, you can play the C#dim7 arpeggio.
Thinking notes ALWAYS helps. The notes in C#dim7 are C# E G Bb

Other examples:

Cmaj7 | Fmaj7 | F#dim7 | G7 |

Over the Cmaj7, Fmaj7 and G7 chords, you could just play:

C, F and G chord arpeggios
Cmaj7, Fmaj7 and G7 chord arpeggios
Any C major scale fingering you know
A minor pentatonic scale

Over F#dim7, you can play the F#dim7 arpeggio.

Here’s a quick video showing how to do this and how it sounds.

Conclusion

Hit me up anytime at vreny@zotzinmusic.com if you have any questions, or if you would like to book a lesson.

These free lessons are cool, but you will never experience the progress, joy, and results that my students experience in lessons when you’re learning by yourself from blogs and videos.

That is why people take lessons: way better results and progress, much more complete information, exposed to way more creative ideas than you can get from a blog or YouTube video.
There is only so much that self-study can accomplish.

If you want to see amazing results and progress in your guitar playing, buy your first lesson here and get started ASAP.