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Jazz Lesson (advanced)
Spice up your jazz lines with the Tritone Sub
※ The lesson topic is a little advanced, but the phrases used in the examples are not too difficult to play. So I encourage beginners and intermediate players to take a look as well!
The following is a line for a ii-V-I in F Major.
The line is completely diatonic (does not contain any notes outside of the key), but still sounds jazzy.
But there are several ways to spice up the lines. One of these ways is to use the "tritone sub" (also referred to as the "b5 substitution").
The following example is very similar to the first example, but for the C7 chord, we are going to replace this with a Gb7 chord (which is the "b5 sub" or "tritone sub").
(The chord that is actually being played is still C7, but we are going to mentally substitute this chord and imagine we are playing over Gb7.)
By playing a line such as below, we end up hitting some notes that aren't in the key of F (such as Ab, Eb, Db etc.), but we are still hitting chord tones such as E (3rd) and C (root). Therefore, even though we are playing some "alterations" which add spice, the harmony remains intact.
The numbers in bar 2 above represent the scale degrees of the notes relative to the C7 chord. The numbers in parentheses represent scale degrees of the notes relative to the "imagined" Gb7 chord.
By utilizing tricks like this, you can make your lines sound jazzier!