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A melody or series of notes is diminished if the lengths of the notes are shortened (this is opposed to augmentation, where the notes are lengthened). A melody originally consisting of four crotchets (quarter-notes) for example, is diminished if it later appears with four quavers (eighth-notes) instead. This technique is often used in contrapuntal music. It gives rise to the " canon in diminution", in which the notes in the following voice are shorter than those in the leading.
An interval is diminished if it is narrowed; a diminished chord is one which contains a diminished interval. Thus a diminished fifth, for example, is a half step narrower than the perfect fifth, and a diminished chord is a minor chord whose fifth note has been lowered a half step. The opposite is augmented.
In Schenkerian analysis a diminution is a division, rather than a diminishing is an expansion, "the process by which an interval formed by notes of longer value is expressed in notes of smaller value," see nonchord tone.