Scales and sonorities of the 20th Century
The Diminished Scale
This scale, which is shown in example 1, consists of alternating major and minors 2nds (this is one reason to also call this scale whole tone-half tone-whole tone). Most of the chords we find are of diminished quality. There are only 2 modes of this scale: one which starts with the major 2nd and followed by a minor 2nd, and the other one starting with the minor 2nd, followed by the major 2nd. There are only 3 transpositions: the one at example 1, the second one which starts with C#-D# and the other one which starts with D-E (example 2), any other transposition or mode will only duplicate the material contents.
Example 1
Example 2
