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Clarified the title to meet my standards a little better.
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General Nuisance
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How to identify and name Full Diminished Seventh Chords?

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General Nuisance
  • 3.8k
  • 1
  • 24
  • 44

How to identify Full Diminished Seventh Chords?

I made a frightening discovery -- No mater what inversion diminished seventh chords are in, all of the notes are the same interval apart! A minor 3rd. How then is someone to identify what name the chord has? Here is an example from Jesus Paid it All, a song I'm trying to transpose to F.

The chord in question falls on the 3rd beat in the first measure of the 3/4 section -- over "He". The song, and you can't see this in the image, is in Db major.

/Users/odimartino/Library/Messages/Attachments/11/01/B472AA83-0566-4F90-AD21-AD174BEB0689/FullSizeRender.jpg

So Diminished 7 chord here, with the notes listed top to bottom as displayed here, goes

`Db`
`Enat`
`Bb`
`Gnat`

If I were to rearrange these into a more directly transferrable to the keyboard way,

`Gnat`
`Bb`
`Db`
`Enat`

But I can also rearrange the notes like this:

`Enat`
`Gnat`
`Bb`
`Db`

Or however you please...

So heres the question: How do I name this chord? Using Roman Numeral notation, how would I write it for transposition?