Tritone Substitution
Check out this Guitar Lesson on Tritone Substitution
from Guitar Control instructor Jon MacLennan.
How’s it going, guys. My name is John McClennan
and I’m here with guitarcontrol.com,
bringing you this video lesson.
Today’s topic is tritone substitution.
What I’m going to do is show you some
nice voicings you can use to start
applying this concept right away.
If we think about what’s called II V I,
which is one of the most common chord
progressions in jazz music, let’s take
the key of B flat. So we have C minor
7 is going to be what we call our II chord,
which again for these chord shapes,
click the link below for the tab. But here we go.
Eight, 8, 8, 8, C minor 7; F7;
and then B flat major 7. So this F7 is
almost like a C chord and then I just
add the pinkie. That’s going to resolve here.
So you get like… Some nice chord voicings.
And now, if we look at this V chord,
this is what we’re going to be substituting
a new chord for. So here’s our F7.
If I just play these three notes,
like a Freddie Green kind of chord, what I’m going
to show you what tritone substitute does is it
creates a chromatic bass line. So rather than
the bass player playing C, F, B flat, he’s going
to go C, B, B flat. So we can play these chords,
C minor 7, B7, B flat major 7 and if we look at
just the notes in an F7 chord — again, I was showing
you just those three notes here — 8, 7, 8.
On guitar, if I take this voicing and then I just put a
B flat 7 right there, two of those notes, these two
notes right here, are in common. So this is why this
chord progression works.
You can take this C minor 7 and then here’s the end result.
So instead of …, We’re now going to get… Nice, creating
this chromatic bass-like and just good chord voicings all around.
So here we go A, C minor 7; 7, 7, 8, 6; B flat 7 sharp 11,
resolving to a B flat major 7.
So just a cool way I encourage you to take a jazz standard
and just play tritone subs everywhere you can.
This not only can influence your chord playing,
but it can also influence soloists, like… Getting different
sounds to the soloing as well.
So there are the chords. Click the link below and we’ll
see you in the next lesson. Thanks for watching.
All right. Well, I hope this helps, and be sure to
click the link below. We’ll see you next time.
