The diminished 7 chord is the only chord in music that will gaslight you to your face. You play a shape, you confidently name the root, and the chord just smirks: "Are you sure? Because I'm also three other chords, and none of them owe you rent." Every note is a minor third apart, which means the whole thing is gloriously symmetrical and completely allergic to having one true name.
This 40-second clip is exercise #11: a diminished 7 arpeggio walked politely through the circle of fourths, one voicing at a time. It's a harmonic study, not a shred flex — the point is smooth voice leading, where each note tiptoes to the next instead of leaping across the fretboard like it's late for a train.
How diminished 7 voice leading works
A diminished 7 arpeggio is just four notes stacked in minor thirds: root, ♭3, ♭5 and ♭♭7. Because every gap is identical, the shape is symmetrical — move it up three frets and you land on the exact same four notes with a different one on the bottom. That's why there are really only three distinct dim7 chords in all of music; everything else is one of those three wearing a fake moustache. Here I run the arpeggio through the circle of fourths, and instead of jumping to a fresh position for each new root, I pick the nearest voicing so the top notes barely move — that's the voice leading doing the heavy lifting.
The useful takeaway: any dim7 arpeggio is also a rootless dominant 7♭9. Grab the dim7 shape a half step above your dominant root — B diminished 7 over a G7, for instance — and you've instantly got a tense, jazzy 7♭9 sound without learning a single new grip. One arpeggio, four bass notes, endless dominant chords to spice up. If you want to feel the same idea with plainer three-note shapes first, the diminished triad version is a gentler on-ramp.
So yes, you spent an afternoon memorising four shapes and it turns out you only needed one of them and a good sense of humour. For the tabs, the Guitar Pro file and the full lesson, they're waiting on my Patreon — where the arpeggios are honest about how few of them there actually are.