Ron Carter Esperanza Spalding - Downbeat

Master Class
Woodshed | By tony monaco
Tritone Substitutions and Dominant 7ths
At this point in my career, teaching has
become very important to me. I’ve learned
a lot from listening to records, and most of my
theory was learned from playing experience.
Not having gone to music college and not having
a traditional piano background, I feel it is my
responsibility to educate myself and then turn
around and teach it, too.
I have been filming and producing educational
DVDs (and now offer digital downloads)
for my online educational portal for approximately
12 years. I have learned so much from
the process. Listening to many artists during my
40-plus years as a musician has taught me one
thing, and that is that many great musicians can
be defined by the way they resolve the ii7–V7–I
progression. As an organ player, I quickly learned
how to play a variety of bass lines appropriate for
this commonly occurring chord progression.
There are five concepts for building bass
lines:
1) Patterns.
2) Notes of the appropriate scale.
3) Chromatic notes (the in-between 1/2 steps
used to get from one point to the next when there
are more beats than notes of the scale).
4) 1/2 step below the intended landing root
(leading tone).
5) 1/2 step above the intended landing root.
This is called tritone substitution, where the
traditional V7–I progression becomes bII7–I.
It’s one of the first chord substitutions we learn
in jazz, and it essentially means that any dominant
seventh chord can be substituted by another
dominant seventh chord whose root is a tritone
(six semitones) away.
Many times you’ll hear keyboardists or guitarists
play something like this when going
from the I7 chord to the IV7 chord on a blues.
For example, this progression within an F blues
would be: F7–B7–Bb7. Never really needing to
understand the theory behind this, it felt like a
natural chord progression to me. While playing
the F7, I just would move the bass to B (1/2 step
above) then resolve to Bb7. It became so natural
that I never even had to think about it being
a tritone substitution. While giving a weeklong
clinic in Italy several years ago, I was asked to
explain tritone substitutions. I started to discuss
the bass line concepts, and then I froze as I realized,
“What else do I say?” I’m sure I turned red
because I didn’t really know.
One of the blessings in playing music is that
you never stop learning. I never will know it all.
It definitely helps keeps the magic alive for me,
and keeps me humble as well. That night I went
online and looked it up. I definitely wanted to
know for myself the theory behind it and to present
it clearly to the class.
The simple definition is that two different
dominant seventh chords whose roots are a tritone
apart share the same third and flat seventh,
enharmonically speaking. So, for example, a C7
chord (C–E–G–Bb) has E (third) and Bb (flat seventh);
a Gb7 chord (Gb–Bb–Db–E) has Bb (third)
and E (flat seventh). Both C7 and Gb7 share the
same two notes: E and Bb. Of course, you can
see the third of one is the flat seventh of the other,
and vice versa. Also note that the roots C and Gb
are a flatted fifth interval apart, which is a tritone.
100 DOWNBEAT DECEMBER 2012