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~ Diablica in Musica ~ Diablica in Musica. That is to say, the devil in the music. For
the most part, the tritone was not used very often in classical western
music until recently. It was most often relegated as a passing tone
from one chord to the next or some other menial task such as this. Not
to say that that particular duty is not important, but it’s very,
very white bread with mayonnaise. Then along came jazz. This spoiled everything. Commonly attributed
and utilized most in the Bebop era, the tritone became pivitol, as well
a defining characteristic of the style. Taking the beast by its horns,
Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gellespie, and the like, wielded the flat five
the way a French chef wields a Sabatier Freres knife, cutting through
the overcooked, underspiced lamb of the early masters. The tritone,
my friends, seasons. So, what is this tritone? Well, technically speaking, it is the
augmented fourth/diminished fifth of the root. Or three whole steps,
or tones, from root. Tri-Tone. That is to say, if your root chord is
a C, the tritone is a F#/Gb. You might be able to imagine the sickening
dissonance such a note creates within a chord, filling you with a sense
of dread as it lingers in your ear, demanding release. Which is why
one would use it as a passing tone. I mean, for all their mucky-muck,
the old composers had yet to find the sophistication that comes with
the tritone. Better yet, imagine it not. Go to your piano or guitar and play
the C chord: C E G. Now instead of playing the G, play a Gb. It may
not sound all that shocking to you, but we have over half a century
of getting used to the sound in everyday music. Still, it does falls
outside of traditional structure. Try to play a simple I-IV-V7 in C,
i.e. C to F to G7 resolving to C. Now replace the final C chord with
the tritone (Gb instead of G) inserted. Does it give you the willies?
Well, does it? A hellish tone indeed. So, what do we do with the tritone? How can we tame its devilish contempt for structure? Well, we use a thing called the tritone substitution. The first way we can use this device is this: in the I-IV-V7 example above, our V7 (dominant) is a G7, correct? Now, anytime we approach a I from a V7, that is to say, the G7 to the C, we can replace the V7 with a V7 based off the tritone of the original root. What? Ok, I’ll explain. The V7 chord is G7. The tritone of G7 is Db. Which means, you can replace the G7 (V7) with a Db7 (tritone sub. based off of the root of G7). Now our pattern is this, I-IV-(tritone sub. of)V7, or C - F - Db7, which resolves back into C. Try it on your instrument. It still maintains the flavor of the original V7 but adds a certain spiciness. And Db resolves nicely to C, n’est pas? You also can use the tritone substitution method on the destination chord. Let’s say you are resolving to A this time. You can take the tritone of A (which is Eb), make a dominant chord out of that root (Eb7), and use that to approach the target chord, in this case, an A. So in the I-IV-V7 example, again: A - D - E7 resolving to A. You would replace the E7 with an Eb7. This is different than the above example because you are using the root of the destination chord (A), as opposed to the V7 (E) to determine what the Tritone sub. will be. The interesting thing about this method is that any chord can be considered a I chord. If you are playing something in the key of G, and somewhere inside your song an Emin is being played, you can think of the Emin as a temporary I chord and use a tritone sub to resolve to it. This means you can play an F7 (tritone of B) or a Bb7 (tritone of E) right before it, but not in place of it, and the natural tendency of tension in the tritone substitution will want to settle back down to the E in the case of the F7, or the B in the case of the Bb7. Interestingly, this is also the case with secondary dominants. A secondary dominant falls under the same rules explained in the last paragraph. Using a chord other than the root chord (i.e. In the key of G the root chord would be a G), you can approach it by using the V7 of that chord. So, again, if you are in the key of G, and you are about to play an Emin, then you can approach that Emin by playing a B7, because B is the V of E, even though B7 falls outside of the key of G. All this can be discussed in another column. Just something to whet your appetite. Another fun fact about the tritone is it’s relationship on the circle of fourths/fifths. Break out your circles and check it out. The tritone falls directly opposite the root on the wheel. Follow the spoke. A tritone is the root note’s complimentary tone, one might say. Just something to think about. So, to sum up, when approaching any chord you can use the V7 (the dominant), the bV7 (the tritone of the destination chord), or the bII7 (the tritone of the V7) to resolve the chord. In other words, if you are approaching C, you can use a G7, Gb7, or a Db7, respectively. Try it and see. Now go out there and make your music more interesting. Again, feel free to send me any questions you might have to evilkramer@musicliberationproject.com
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