Tritone Substitution In Jazz

Tritone substitution is a really great way to spice up your jazz chord progressions and add interest to common chord progressions. Tritone substitution is a great method to add tension and interest to a solo or chord progression and is a very common jazz idea.

In jazz, a tritone substitution is where you substitute a dominant seventh chord with another dominant chord that is three whole steps (a tritone, or 6 semitones) away from the original dominant seventh chord. An example of this would be replacing a G7 chord for another dominant seven chord that is a tritone (6 semitones) away from G which would be a Db7 chord. The main reason that these two dominant seventh chords may be substituted for each other is that they share the two of the same notes that form a tritone in each chord. In a G7 chord, the third is B and the seventh is F. In the D♭7 chord, the third is an F and the seventh is a B note. The tritone substitution kind of sounds like an altered G7 chord to the listeners ear.

Tritone Substitution In Action

Tritone substitution works especially well in a 2 5 1 type progression because it creates a smooth chromatic movement. A normal 2 5 1 progression in C looks like this:

Dm7 | G7 | Cmaj7 | Cmaj7

We can make this 2 5 1 progression more interesting by substituting the G7 chord for a dominant chord that is a tritone away from G (in this case a Db note). The new 2 5 1 progression with the tritone substitution looks like this.

Dm7 | Db7 | Cmaj7 | Cmaj7

As you can see there is a chromatic decent from the D note down to the C note which sounds really nice. Nearly all jazz musicians will experiment with a tritone substitution at some point and it is one of the easiest and most common chord substitutions in jazz music. See if you can find ways to add tritone substitutions to your music to create interesting chord progressions.