How To Use The Flat Sixth Chord

Good morning. This is Duane, and we’re doing a series called “Good Stuff You Really Ought To Know About Music!,” all having to do with music theory, various aspects of music theory and chords and so on. Today we’re going to take up the flat sixth chord sub. The bVI chord sub.

First of all, what’s a chord sub? Sub, is of course, short for substitution. It’s a chord that takes the place of another chord. For example, if I have a G 7th chord and I find a way to substitute for that, that’s called a substitute chord. Any time you play a different chord than the chord that’s written, it’s called a substitute. If this is G 7th and I’m subbing that, that’s a sub. If the chord’s G 7th and I’m playing that chord, that’s the sub. If I’m playing that chord, that’s the sub. They’re just substitute chords. We’re going to take the flat 6 sub.

Now, a 6th is the 6th note of any scale. If you’re in the key of C you just count up 6 notes and that’s the 6th degree of the scale. A flat 6 would be where? It would be A flat, wouldn’t it? Then you’d build an A flat chord on that. What we’re going to do is we’re going to sub the A flat chord for the C chord. In other words, any time I have a C chord I could substitute an A flat chord for it.

Now, do you see why I could substitute that? What note does the C chord and the A flat chord have in common? Yeah, they both have C in it. There’s a C in the C chord and there’s a C in the A flat chord. Say I’m playing a song and I’m ending on the C chord, the 1 chord, I could substitute the 6th chord for it. You’ve heard that kind of things. In fact, let me do it in a fuller context.

You see, instead of going home from G 7th to C I went from G 7th to A flat. I put in a major 7th just to make it a little more palatable. You could put in a 6th and a major 7th or a passing tone like that. Also what you could do is once you’re on the flat 6th, you could come up to the flat 7th on your way back to the C chord. In other words, A flat, B flat, C. You’ve heard endings like that many times I’m sure. Again.

That’s all there is to a flat 6 sub. Any time you have a 1 chord with the root in it, then you can substitute a 6th chord because it has the same note in it. Does that make sense? Hope so. If you enjoy these kinds of tips come on over to playpiano.com and sign up for our whole series. They are all free, so hope to see you there. Bye bye for now.

***For lots more good stuff on piano playing come on over to my website at https://www.playpiano.com and sign up for our free piano tips – “Exciting Piano Chords & Sizzling Chord Progressions!”

Here’s a great little book on chords and chord progressions on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Piano-Chords-Chord-Progressions-Exciting-ebook/dp/B0076OUGDE/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404158669&sr=1-1&keywords=piano+chords+duane+shinn

Here is the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7jsvPnZ67U&feature=youtu.be

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