January 6, 2021

Tritone Chord Substitutions

How much would you pay me to teach you how to do tritone chord substitutions?

Zero dollars, right?

If you’re not a musician, you’ve probably never heard of tritone chord substitutions. Even if you ARE a musician, you might never have heard of it.

And yet there are people who have spent decades studying, practicing, and teaching how to do tritone chord substitutions.

Here’s a glimpse into the madness:

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a scale that fit over both G7 AND D♭7? Well, there is. You have a number of options when improvising over G7 and/or D♭7:

• Play G Mixolydian but avoid the C
  • C is an avoid note for G7 and D♭7 – so just omit it
• Scales that fit over G7 and D♭7
  • Wholetone Scale = G A B D♭ E♭ F
  • Dominant Diminished Scale = G A♭ B♭ B D♭ D E F
  • A♭ melodic minor = A♭ B♭ C♭ D♭ E♭ F G
    • AKA G Altered Scale
    • AKA D♭ Lydian Dominant
  • D melodic minor = D E F G A B C#
    • AKA D♭ Altered Scale
    • AKA G Lydian Dominant

So now it doesn’t matter whether the accompaniment plays a G7 or a D♭7, because the above scales work well over both chords.

Long story short, tritone chord substitutions are hard to learn.

REALLY hard.

Here’s the thing...

Now that you know that tritone chord substitutions are hard, does that make them more valuable to you?

Nope. Not in the least.

How hard something is to learn has no correlation whatsoever to how valuable it is to a potential buyer.

Remember this:

If buyers don’t care about it, they won’t pay for it.

Now...

Think of a skill you have that was really hard to learn and answer me this:

Do your ideal buyers care about it?

Yours,

—J

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