How to improvise over half diminished chords when part of minor 2 5 1 progressions. Improvise over m7b5 chords in minor 2 5 1 progressions.

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Video script:
In this lesson we'll take a brief look at a few different approaches you can use to improvise over a Half Diminished 7th Chord, when found in its natural habitat as the 2 chord in a Minor 2 5 1

A quick reminder here that these days you are more likely to see the half diminished chord written as a m7b5 chord.

So we'll work with this sequence Dm7b5 G7 Cm7 Cm7

Knowing that the m7b5 chord in this context is the 2 chord in the key, we can simply think a tone lower and treat the whole four bars as being in the key of C Minor. So my first approach is simply to use a C natural minor scale over all three chords. This works OK and is often the best approach especially over a fast tempo progression.

But, if you have a little more time it is nice to separate out the three 2 5 1 chords and approach each with a chord or arpeggio based idea. Here's a useful arpeggio pattern for this. I often just use this as far as the b3 in the upper octave because I find the diamond pattern, here highlighted in yellow, a useful way of remembering where these notes are working them into licks.

In the 2 5 1 context this is especially useful as you can then bolt on another diamond pattern for the dominant 7th arpeggio of the 5 chord. And you can see how these two diamonds link together, the root note of the half dim chord becoming the 5th in the dominant 7th chord.

Not only does this offer up all kinds of possibilities over those two chords, but it is also very easy to then connect with the resolving C Minor chord. Just working the first position E shaped C Minor. Throw in blues based licks, pentatonic, natural minor, harmonic minor or simply work the chord shape for Cm or one of its simple substitutes Cm6 Cm9 Cm11 etc...

With this video you should find a track audio file demonstrating these different approaches to the Minor 2 5 1. And there is also a nice long backing track available for you to work out your own versions of these ideas over.

Occasionally though, you may come across a passage of music where a half dim chord is used as the basis of a vamp - a repetitive rhythmic device often used as an intro or linking passage in a piece of music.

We'll take a look at a couple of ways to approach this situation in the next lesson in this series.

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