Abe

YO.

It's warm. And humid. But if blogging was easy, everyone would do it. Wait. Everyone does.

But not everyone uses tritone substitution to jazz up their chord progressions!

For a complete explanation of tritone, or flat five, substitution, read this wayyy awesome article that some genius wrote. (Ha ha!)

Here's a hands on, no BS (Britney Spears) explanation:

Try playing a ii-V7-I in C major:

Dm7 G7 Cmaj7

Groovy.

Next, play this:

Dm7 Db7 Cmaj7 (Note the Db7 is not a minor seven.)

What did we do? We substituted the Db7 in place of a G7.

How? The V-I movement is the strongest chord progression there is. The "heart" of the matter is the 3rd and 7th (B and F) of G7 pull to the root and 3rd (C and E) of Cmaj7.

Now, the chord found a tritone away from G7 (Db7) happens to contain a B and F as well! Except the F is the 3rd and the B is the 7th. (Technically, it's Cb, but that's another story.) While some of the notes of the chord are out of key, Db and Ab, the F and B work very nicely and pull to Cmaj7.

Try it! It's jazzy!

Lest we forget our philosophy today, our wisdom comes from the guy Slash ripped off in choice of headgear. Abe Lincoln:

"Always bear in mind that your resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing."

Righto, Abester!

Rock on!