Attention: Intervals are the building block of chords. Remember talking about the tritone interval? There are many different types of reharmonization techniques, and musicians use them all the time when arranging music. Once you’ve learned the basics of harmonic function and chord progressions, then you should try to expand your technique by bending or breaking some of the rules you first needed to learn. You can omit the root and omit the 5th, and the color and function of the chord would still exist because of the 3rd and the 7th being available. The term Substitution in this particular case means and refers to the fact that we will be substituting out whatever note or chord we are seeing, for the tritone interval away from our given note. Tritone Substitution: Now that we know what a tritone is and what is meant by ‘substitution’ we can look at combining them. These are things to think about as a player and even more so as a composer or arranger. This doesn’t mean you can’t substitute other chord qualities, but a dominant 7 is most often the chord being used to replace. If you’re still wondering how we got Db as an augmented fourth interval below G, then you need to Your email address will not be published. Now, let’s have a look at what our tritone substitution entails. Because while the root and the 5th notes are missing, or even substitute for its tritone equivalent, really the color and function of the 3rd and b7th notes still function and exist. Db7 is then the tritone substitute for the G7. Tritone Substitution is usually applied to a Dominant 7 chord. The bII7 (Db7) chord also contains that same tritone, but written as F – Cb, and it also resolves to the C – E in the C Maj. Also notice that the iimin7 ⇨ bII7 ⇨ I progression includes a descending sequence of semitones, going from D ⇨ Db ⇨ C. This also creates an additional pull to the tonic chord. Tritone substitution is the substitution of one chord (almost always a dominant 7th of some sort) for one with a root a tritone away. In E Major, for example, the 4th is A and the 7th is D#, and A ⇨ D# is a tritone. Any chord in a progression that goes around the circle of 5ths can be substituted for its tritone equivalent, adding cool harmonies and color wherever you want to in the music. Welcome to Hello Music Theory! Your email address will not be published. The reason that this substitution works is that dominant 7 chords with a bass note a tritone apart share the same 3rd and 7th. The same works for going down as well (for example, Bb ⇨ E is a tritone). It can be used to create a descending bass line in a II – V – I progression. Using this substitution gives us this progression: Imaj7 (CMaj7) ⇨ IVmaj7 (Fmaj7) ⇨ iimin7 (Dmin7) ⇨ bII7 (Db7) ⇨ I (C Maj): The G7 chord contained the tritone B – F, which resolved to C – E in the C Maj chord. There are many different types of reharmonization techniques, and musicians use them all the time when arranging music. The reason a tritone substitution works harmonically, and the reason one can easily be swapped for another, is that dominant 7th chords that are a tritone apart share the same tritone notes within the chords themselves. A Tritone Substitution is when you substitute a dominant 7th chord (like G7 or D7) for another dominant 7th chord that is a tritone away from it. In jazz, you will often see the iii chord replacing the I chord. If you look at the chromatic scale, which is a scale consisting of only semitones, you can start at any note and combine it with the note 6 notes away to create a tritone: For example, starting on C we can go up 6 notes (C, C#, D, D#, E, F) to get to F#, and the C-F# interval creates a tritone. The Tritone The tritone is an interval. I really appreciate this! Do you want it to be more of an effect or more of a legitimate chord for a full duration? Tritone in C major. Once this technique is completely, our new harmony looks like this: D-7 Db7 to Cmaj7, which is really a neat sound if you ask me! Required fields are marked *. © Hello Music Theory 2020 | All rights reserved | Sitemap. But once you understand the interval relation in that substitution, you can expand that concept to other vertical structures as well. There are examples of Tritone Substitutions in classical music. For example, if you have a C7 chord you’d substitute it with a Gb7 chord. The term “Tritone”, refers to the interval tritone, which indicates that we will be dealing with a 4 and a half step difference as the tritone is a half step larger than a perfect fourth and a half step smaller than a perfect fifth. They can be added in anywhere there’s dominant 7th motion, like in a ii ⇨ V7 ⇨ I progression, and if you see a long progression of descending semitones (like in the “Dizzy Atmosphere” example), then that is most likely using tritone subs. So, C to F# is a tritone. One of the most widely-known examples of this is the ending of Schubert’s “String Quintet in C Maj”. Years ago you could get banned from the church for even playing a tritone due to its very “harsh” or dissonant sound. Let’s say we do not have a 3rd anymore. Thanks so much for this! The notes C – F# form a tritone themselves, so the two chords share a pair of notes that form a tritone. That is the golden rule! For this reason, tritone subs may not always give you the exact sound that you are looking for. Tritone substitutions refer to changing a dominant chord for another dominant chord a tritone away. Thanks so much for this! In order for us to understand why a tritone substitution works as a technique in general, it’s important to know and understand what is going on theory wise. I’m Dan and I run this website. In a natural minor scale (also called the Aeolian mode), the tritone … A tritone substitution really is a reharmonization technique. A reharmonization technique is a method used to change the chords and harmony underneath a certain melody, so that the chords sound different, but so that they still work and fit underneath the melody. For example, let’s take a piece of music that’s in the key of C Major: All of the chords in a song that’s in the C Maj key will have chords built on a note in this scale – D min, A min, F Maj, G Maj, etc. Required fields are marked *. Well, how are we able to say if the chord is major or minor? Another common usage is in a 12-bar blues progression. ex 8b: Derivation of tritone (flat five) substitution. 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