The Tritone Chord Progression Is Based On An Augmented 4th Interval

Good morning. This is Duane. We’ve been doing a series called “Good Stuff Your Really Ought to Know About Music!” all having to do with music theory, various aspects of music theory. Today we’re going to take up another chord substitution called the tritone chord progression. It’s also a chord substitution so I didn’t quite know how to label this lesson. It’s both. It can be a chord substitution but it’s also a progression.

The tritone, by the way, is defined as an augmented 4th. In other words, here’s the notes of the C scales: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8. There’s a 4th. Augmented means to widen, augment. There’s an augmented 4th. If you were in the key of G or had a G chord, for example, where is an augmented 4th from there? It’s D flat, isn’t it? Or C sharp.

Let’s say you’re playing a song and you have a G 7th chord and you’re going to C. Normally it would resolve like this, wouldn’t it? That’s a normal cadence. The tritone substitution calls for substituting the augmented 4th, in other words D flat or C sharp, for that G 7th, so we could go to that. That’s D flat 7th there and then home to C, so it sounded like this or like this. It depends what chords you put in. Just depends on how you use it.

If you were on the C 7th chord, what is the augmented 4th there? It’s F sharp, isn’t it? Instead of playing just C 7th, moving to F we could play F sharp 7th and then slide down to F. It’s a very useful chord substitution. Let me illustrate it in a song. I’ll play “Misty.” I use that a lot to illustrate things. Let’s pretend this is the last section of Misty. See that? I was on G 7th. So much in love, like so.

You can use that augmented 4th as a chord substitute for any dominant 7th chord. G 7th, this chord substitution would be D flat, wouldn’t it? For C, the chord substitution would be F sharp. You can figure it out in each key of course just by finding the augmented 4th and using that before you resolve to the tonic chord. Hope that helps a little bit. If you enjoy these series of piano tips, come on over to Play Piano and sign up for our entire series, because they’re free. Thanks, and we’ll see you tomorrow with another idea. Bye bye for now.

Here is the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bijNK-Xpnc&feature=youtu.be

***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

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