What In The World Is a “Tri-Tone” Chord Substitution?

Good morning again. This is Duane, and today I would like to talk about the tri-tone substitution. The tri-tone chord substitution has been a mysterious concept for hundreds of years, but it is really simple. It is like a lot of things in life. They reality of it is very simple, but it looks complex on the outside and so don’t let it scare you. For years, I had heard about the tri-tone substitution and I didn’t know what it was. I discovered that I had probably been using it for 20 years before I knew what the word meant. You may be using it as well.

A tri-tone is simply 3 whole steps from any given note. In another words, a whole step above C is D, another whole step is E, another whole step is F sharp, so from a C to an F sharp that’s called a tri-tone. Back in the Middle Ages that was considered not exactly evil but certainly unlikely, kind of like the number 13, probably because of the distant sound that you get between those 2 notes. But it is very useful when it comes to chord substitutions. Let’s take a chord progression like G seventh to C, you run into that progression all the time don’t you. That is the most standard of all chord progressions, right? A 5 chord going to a long chord. Now, for that 5 chord we are going to substitute the chord that’s a tri-tone below. What’s a tri-tone below G? There’s a whole step, there’s a whole step, there’s another whole step. So D flat is a tri-tone below a G. Now, the secret to this is finding the third and the seventh of the original chord. In other words, here’s a G seventh chord. There’s the root, there’s the third, there’s the fifth, and there’s the seventh. So, the third is there and the seventh is there. Those are the 2 key notes or keys we need to keep in mind because what the third is in the key of G becomes the seventh in the key of D flat, and what the seventh is in the G seventh chord is the third in the key of D flat. So in other words, the best substitute for chord progressions between G seventh and C is D flat seventh because it has 2 common notes. You see, it has those notes in common.

Let me play the other notes of the chord now. You see that. So that means I can substitute for G seventh C and I can substitute D flat seventh and then go up to C. Now you can voice that in a variety of ways. Let’s say you are playing along and you get to there, that’s a D flat seventh where I have a ninth in it, but there’s the seventh and there’s the third, which used to be the third and the seventh of the G seventh; well, they still are but you just invert them right, and they become the third and the seventh of the new chord, D flat, and that allows you to slide in there.

Let me do another situation. [piano playing 00:03:19]. The voice is different, but it’s the same chord. It’s G flat seventh with a sixth on top. It doesn’t matter what other chords you put into it.

Let’s do a couple more. Let’s say that we are on D seventh, what’s the best substitution between D seventh and of course it’s going around in circle for D seventh where it almost always goes to the G chord. Those chords want to move up a perfect 4th. D seventh goes to G. So what’s the tri-tone in the G seventh chord? Well, we have to find the third, which is F sharp and the seventh, which is C, and then put the seventh down here. Okay, now just reverse that. If that’s the third and the seventh of the D chord, what is it the seventh and the third of some other chord? Well, it would be a half step above G, which is A flat. If I play the root and the fifth of the A flat seventh chord, root, fifth, I already have the third and the seventh. So in other words, A flat seventh can be the substitute because you go from the D seventh chord to G and you can slide in in other words like that. If you are at the C seventh chord, again let’s just do the third of the C seventh chord is E, the seventh is B flat. So let’s reverse that. In the chord substitution that we are going to use G flat seventh, that’s the third and that’s the seventh. So if you want to go from C seventh to F, you could go there [inaudible 00:04:56] of F sharp seventh that is in our mind.

Again, the concept is not hard. It’s a little hard to describe because of the inversion of the third and seventh, but think about that for a while and try it out and I think you will find it very useful. It’s a nice chord substitution that you can use in a lot of settings and it just adds interest and excitement to your piano playing.

Thanks for this time you spent with me. If you want to get more tips like this, come on over to Play Piano and sign up for our free newsletter, so we will see you there. Bye.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/606050/tritone

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZARB6yQ6pY
**************************************************************************************************************************************************************
Please click on the photo-ad below: