F# Half Whole Diminished, Piano Side

Where F# Half Whole Diminished lies on this reader's keyboard, and what it is for.

8 notes to the octave, lit below across two octaves of this reader's keyboard, with every key numbered by where it sits in the scale. The numbers are the useful part mid-bar: a chart moves under you, and the thing you need is which degree is still under the hand — not where the run started.

Tense, symmetrical, and slightly sinister — alternating half and whole steps pack in the b9, #9, #11, and 13, so it sounds like a dominant chord stretched to breaking point. Edgy, jazzy, and restless.

Heard in: Jazz lines over 13b9 dominant chords, fusion, film-noir and horror scoring — the sound of a V chord that refuses to settle.

The right hand takes the fill and the left keeps the written number sounding under it, so a piano reader hears every note of the scale against the chord the chart called rather than in place of it.

Run it hands together until the window stops being a pattern, then take it to a chart counted in F# and let the numbers pick their own notes out of it.