What scale can you play over a diminished chord?

https://www.quora.com/What-scale-can-you-play-over-a-diminished-chord

Response 1
There is not one answer to this, as there are several different contexts where diminished chords
show up in tonal music. There are also several different “correct” answers, if you are playing “inside.”
If you are accepting of some degree of “outsideness” then the number of answers gets even longer.

The most common diminished chord you will find in Songbook standards is the secondary viidim7
chord, resolving up a semitone to the next chord. Spell this one correctly as if it was actually the
V7(b9) of the next chord, without the root. Fill in the in-between notes from one of two places: the
key signature of the piece, or the key signature of the chord it is resolving to. Most times, you get the
same solution from both methods, but once in a while you get a different answer, which gives you
some choice. You can also treat it as if it was the actual V7 of the next chord with any set of
extensions, which gives you about 8 different choices, some of which match the actual chord better
than others, but all are in common use. So in the key of C, a C#dim7 chord going to Dm7 would take a
scale with all the same pitches as a D harmonic minor scale, possibly with a passing C natural. In the
same key, an Edim7 chord going to Fmaj7 would take a scale with all the same notes as C mixolydian
with a flat 2, possibly with a passing E flat.

The second-most-common diminished chord that shows up in Songbook standards is the biiidim7,
which usually comes from a iiim7 or Imaj7 and goes to a iim7, but always to a minor chord a
semitone lower. This one is weird, because it works by linear harmony, and if you spell it “correctly”
it won't give you as many right notes as if you spell it “incorrectly.” So for “The Song Is You” in C, the
second bar is E flat dim7 going to Dm7, spell it instead as D#dim7 and pretend it is a B7(b9) chord,
filling in the in-between notes from the key signature. This odd choice gives the most “right” notes in
the key, all the same pitches as E harmonic minor (with a possible passing D natural!)

The third diminished chord is the common-tone diminished, which stays on the same root (Cdim7 to
C7 or Cmaj7 or Cm something). For this one, the whole-half diminished scale usually works nicely.

The whole-half diminished scale also works perfectly well on the first two examples as well. I don’t
like it as much myself for several reasons. One is all the university jazz players play whole-half
automatically on ALL diminished chords, which tends to make them all sound the same and doesn’t
sound as if they really mean it. Two is that using the same chord scale in all situations ignores the
richness of the colours available from other scale choices.

What kills me (in a bad way, not in a good way!) is hearing young players play the half-whole
diminished scale starting on the root of a diminished chord. This gives a crapload of bad notes and
reveals the player as not understanding what they are doing.
Understand, though, that chord scales are not meant to tell you exactly what to do. They just show
you which notes are considered to be diatonic in a given situation. Chromatics are a part of jazz, and
cannot be ignored, as they are part of the pallette of colours that jazz musicians use.

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Response 2

I wouldn’t worry about thinking overly precise about this sort of thing. So much of what
people say about scales that fit chords is based on so-called harmonic avoid notes. These
are notes that are a half step above a chord tone. Since so much of what a person plays is
transitory, short duration, it makes no sense to bother too much about exact scales and
the notes in a given scale to avoid. It is sort of like health advice. Avoid red meat, etc.
Music is not a science and the phrase “music theory” should be changed to “music
guidelines.” When sustaining a note, sure, avoid notes are probably best avoided, but
makes no sense to tell a guitr player to avoid notes in some global sense for a given
chord.

Anyway, to try and add some substance to my answer, and to keep this simple, let’s
assume you are talking about diminished 7th chord. Otherwise you could mean
several different things. Below will get you started, but from there experiment and don’t
think too much about scales in lead guitar. How often are you playing through a scale in
a linear sequence? Good lead playing has scale fragments, arpeggios, and everything in
between, but rarely would a good lead player just play a scale linearly over a chord. And
when you actually analyze what someone is playing, given what I just mentioned, it is
often very tough to say with any authority, “So and so was using such and such scale over
this chord.”

Back to some substance. One way to think about possible starting points for choosing a
scale with which to experiment with is to ask  “What scales produce diminished 7th
chords?” This leads us to Harmonic Minor. For instance, 7th degree of the Harmonic
Minor scale corresponds to a diminished 7th chord. So phrasing using Harmonic Minor
can certainly work, especially if accentuating in a way that brings out the intervals found
in the 7th mode of that scale.

Another scale that generates a diminished 7th chord is the half-whole step scale as
mentioned in answers below. Important to note that half-whole step scale is not same as
whole-half step scale. To make sense over diminished 7th, the half-whole step scale is
what would cover the notes of a diminished 7th chord.

So consider G# Dim7. Has notes G#, B, D, F.

A Harmonic Minor Scale has notes A, B, C, D, E, F, G#. Starting from G# the scale
would be G#, A, B, C, D, E, F
G# Half-Whole Step Scale has notes G#, A, B, C, D, Eb, F, F#. You can write this several
ways, but I wrote the notes this way so you see more clearly that there is an F. So this
scale has notes of the G# Diminished 7th chord.

Symmetry of diminished 7th scales has lots of implications. You can confirm for yourself
that G# Dim7 has same notes as B Dim7, D Dim7 and F Dim7. This is because of the
successive minor thirds that make up the Dim7 chord and how adding another minor
third to the final note of the chord just takes you back to where you started.

Anyway, hopefully you can appreciate that while above can point you towards some
scales to get you started, it would be absurd to say “You must play over diminished 7th
chords using Harmonic Minor or Half-Whole Step Scales!”

Just mess around and come up with cool sounding phrases which is easier if you know
enough about scales to launch into cool phrases :-) Easy, right ??!!

Brian