How To Use Tritone Substitution For Jazz Guitar
Ah, the mysterious tritone
Ah, the mysterious tritone. It can be used to great effect for really changing up the sound of your chords progressions. And not just for jazz players either. Metal, rock, and blues players get a lot of action on the so-called "Devil's Interval". Let's look at one way to use this cool sound.
When we talk about tritones, we're talking about an interval of a flatted fifth (or sharp fourth, same thing). For instance the interval from C to F# on your guitar. For a great example of the tritone at work listen to the very beginning of Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix where he combines B and F for that disturbing sounding intro before the main riff.
To the ears of a common listener, a tritone sounds very dissonant. But you're not a common listener. You're a guitarist. And with time you'll learn to love this sound if you don't already.
When we talk about Tritone Substitution we're talking about swapping out one of the chords in your progression. In this case we'll be swapping out any dominant seventh chord ie. G7, A7, C7, etc.
You can swap your dominant seventh chord for the dominant seventh a tritone higher anytime you want. Let's say you have a chord progression that goes C Am7 Dm7 G7 C - Pretty standard fare.
Instead of playing that G7, swap it for the seventh chord a tritone, or three whole steps (ie. 6 frets) higher. That would be a Db7 here. Our chord progression would then be C Am7 Dm7 Db7 C. Sounds pretty cool, right? Can you use both the G7 and the Db7? Of course you can!
So, why does it work? Let's take a look at the notes in each chord. G7 is spelled G B D F. The Db7 is spelled Db F Ab Cb. The chords share two of the same notes, the F and B (or Cb, same thing). By the way, check out the interval between F and B.... Tritone!
The magic here has to do with the way each note in the 7th chord resolves back to the I chord C. To get from G7 to C, the B resolves up to the note C. And the F resolves down to the note E. The same two notes resolve in the same half step fashion from Db7 to C, so it works very nicely. And you even get a cool half step resolution from the Db to C.
Oh, and why is it called "The Devil's Interval"? Hundreds of years ago, the music industry was controlled by the Catholic Church. They paid composers to be on staff and write for them. The dissonant sound of the tritone interval made them decide it was somehow evil. Composers could be (and were) excommunicated from the church (and their job) for using the interval.
But musicians are always rebels... They used plenty of dominant seventh chords. And as we saw above any dominant seventh uses that tritone interval in the 3rd and 7th of the chord. Sneaky!
So while you won't be publicly shunned for using tritones anymore, you can still go out and "raise a little hell" with some fancy tritone substitution on your guitar.
How To Use Tritone Substitution For Jazz Guitar
By: Phil Johnson
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