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Pivot Chords and Diminished Chords
Two keys, no matter how unrelated, will always have at least two chords that share the same root note (usually more than two chords). You can use these chords as pivot chords.
You can often exploit the diminished chord for pivot potential. The diminished chord has equal-sized minor third intervals, so, technically, it has no root. Therefore, it repeats itself every three semitones (see Figure 103 below). Since it’s so unstable, you can use it to take a number of different harmonic paths.
(Also, as noted earlier, the VIIm can sometimes substitute for VIIº, as these chords have two notes in common.)
FIGURE 103: Chord Map Showing The Versatile Diminished Chord