I use all four fingers to play both those chords. I do sometimes use a barre to play a diminished chord, depending on context. My fingers aren't capable of playing that minor seventh chord as a barre chord. Heh.
There's no right or wrong way to play a chord, as long as it sounds nice. Usually whatever comes naturally will work best.
I barre them for the most part, especially if I am playing a jazz tune that has a run of barre chords; otherwise, it's quite hard to barre, unbarre for that one chord, then barre again for rest of the run.
I use the fingering method if it's all open chords that I am playing.
I play diminished chords with a barre, it is much faster for me to get into the chord.
Since diminished are many times passing chords the need to grab quickly is important.
I worked on stretching my index (pointer) finger to split the diminished shape into the m7.
From the m7 I can also move my middle finger on the 3rd string back a fret to make the 9 chord.
Makes a great jazzy progression.
Thanks to everyone for the welcome and the quick, very informative replies. I'm partial to jazz standards and there are a lot of chord runs where the barre makes the transitions easier. Where there are open chords, I've been fingering, so I'll keep working on both.
I always have trouble forming those dim chords quickly enough to keep the rhythm, so that explains it...they do always seem to be momentary passing chords.
Thanks for that insight.
