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Adding Spice Musicians often alter chords to provide interest or “spice” to their music or to achieve nice voice leading. Common examples are to raise the 3rd to a “sus4” in a major or dominant chord, or to raise or lower the 5th or 9th in a major, minor, or dominant chord. Of course, these alteration approaches do not change the root of the chord. However, another nice way to add spice is to use a substitute chord with a different root in place of the “proper” chord in a progression. This is the subject of the third section of this book. Note, however, that sometimes there is directionality — i.e., moving from chord A to chord B might work well, but moving in the opposite direction might not. Warnings to this effect are supplied as appropriate in the footnotes. A very important area of music composition is the “borrowing” of chords from the parallel minor and parallel major harmonized scales — an approach known as “modal interchange.” While modal interchange does involve chord substitution, the subject of modal interchange is beyond the scope of this book. The chord substitutes covered in this book are confined to two other important categories: diatonic chord substitution and tritone subs.
Diatonic Chord Substitution Diatonic chord substitution (also known as “tonal substitution”) occurs when one chord from a harmonized scale is substituted for another chord in the same harmonized scale. This works best when the two chords are both in the same “diatonic chord family.” The three diatonic chord families are the tonic family, the subdominant family, and the dominant family. For the major and natural minor harmonized scales, the triadic diatonic chord families are as shown in Figure 1. While not traditionally done, many guitar professionals also include the Generally, this book presents diatonic chord substitutes that are in the same diatonic chord family (tonic, subdominant, or dominant). However, in some cases, chord substitutes cross over diatonic chord families. Figure 2 illustrates the use of diatonic chord substitutes to create variations on a ii-V-I progression in the key of Cmajor. This book presents the most commonly used diatonic chord substitutes as pairs of moveable chords — in a manner that emphasizes the similarity of the two chords. This approach promotes memory retention regarding the special relationship of diatonic chord substitutes. Tritone Subs The tritone sub, common in jazz and many other types of music, is a dominant 7th chord that is a substitute for another dominant 7th chord (the “expected chord” or the “replaced chord”), where the root note of the tritone sub is a tritone interval (i.e., three whole steps) higher than that of the replaced chord. Tritone substitution is also called “flat five substitution,” because the tritone interval equals the interval of a flatted fifth. Often, the replaced chord is harmonically the V7 chord in the key (or key center) of the song. When this is true, the tritone sub can be seen as the In other cases, the tritone sub can replace a secondary dominant chord. This can be seen in One Note Samba by Antonio Carlos Jobim. In this song (in the key of B Note, incidentally, that One Note Samba also provides a great example of diatonic chord substitution. This happens on the very first chord of the song, where the iii chord (Dm7) can be understood to substitute for the I chord The great utility of the tritone sub relates to the important relationship between the tritone sub and the replaced chord. The 3rd and |
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VII as being an “honorary member” of the major-key subdominant family. This reflects the popularity of this chord, especially in rock music today.
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