So how do we play sick bluesy licks over top of minor two five one chord progressions
well i'm gonna show you a very simple tool to make this really easy coming right up
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out on anything going on here so this simple tool for really spicing up your jazz lines
and playing really bluesy stuff over minor two five one chord progressions is something we call
tritone substitution but before we get to tritone substitution and exactly how to utilize it in
order to get that bluesy sound let's talk about what a minor 251 chord progression is
in concert c minor so a minor two five one chord progression in c minor is d minor seven flat five
g seven that's the five chord and then c minor seven is the one chord
any variation of that and there's a lot of different stuff that we
can play over top of a minor 251 such as a lick like this
right but what we want to do for this video today is get some really awesome
bluesy language coming out
you know stuff like this but let's use this tool of tritone substitution so what exactly is
tritone substitution and how can we use it well tritone substitution is simply substituting one
chord for another chord a tritone interval away so if we have the chord d minor seven flat five
our two chord and we wanna substitute it for a tritone we call this the
tritone sub of two then what we can do is go what is a tritone away from d now that would
be the flat five or the sharp four however you want to think about it that's what a tritone is
okay in this case it's a flat so now a very common quality of chord for tritone substitution
is a dominant seventh chord so what we're going to be doing then is taking that a flat and playing a
dominant seventh chord so now we have an a flat seven followed by a g7 that's the five chord
and a c minor seven so the tritone substitution of two which is a flat seven with the five chord
and then the one chord c minor okay so now that we understand what tritone substitution is how can we
use this as a tool to create bluesy lines in our jazz playing so the first thing we need to do is
understand why making a tritone substitution for a two chord is going to bring out a bluesy sound
the best way to do that is to compare it to a c minor blues scale which is like this c e flat f
f sharp g and then b flat okay now when we look at the notes in the c minor blues scale and we
compare it to the a flat seven where we have an a flat and we have a c and we have an e flat
and then we have a g flat right we can see that the note that really stands out for us
is this f sharp note this is what we call the blue note in jazz or especially in this blues scale
it's kind of that note that's bringing it all out and that
g flat or that f sharp in the a flat seven is the seventh of the a flat so in other words
that note is really the note that we want to be targeting in our jazz lines but let's go ahead and
take it a step further because where scales really don't do it for me when it comes to jazz improv
is they oftentimes miss out on the chord tones which are super important for us bringing out the
harmony in a jazz standard which really creates authentic jazz lines so i'd always like you to
approach tritone substitution or really anything in jazz by first thinking about the chord tones
right that's just simple identifying what the chord tones actually are but when i'm
coming from that perspective i can think about hitting that blue note which is the seventh
but hitting those chord tones the thirds the sevenths the fifths now to the g7
right resolving to the c minor sevens so if we're thinking
about this tritone substitution from the context of chord tones
right we can start creating those bluesy lines all while not missing out on the chord tone
harmony going on underneath it so what i want to do now is quickly take a look at this tune called
there is no greater love we happen to be studying it in our inner circle membership and let's take a
look at a few examples here so we have a few two five one chord progressions in here the d minor
seven flat five followed by the g7 and instead of a minor chord this one does resolve to a dominant
seven first and then goes to a minor seventh but let's just ignore that for now another place
you see it is down here in the bridge which is a minor 7 d7 to g minor so it's a 2 5 1 and g minor
but actually a very common substitution for the changes in general is that a flat 7
sharp 11 because the sharp 11 is the melody note so you'll often hear people playing this tune
there's no greater love a flat 7 sharp 11 to g7 to that dominant c7 down there before going
to the c minor 7. now again if we look back here like typically we're not playing that
in the regular changes for there's no greater love but we are able to add that e flat seven
into the harmonies so now instead of a minor 7 flat 5 to d7 to g minor 7 we have e flat 7
to d7 to g minor 7 so even without me playing single note lines you can already hear
that really super bluesy sound coming out in the harmony so here's my challenge for
you today is to go ahead and go through different jazz standards that you know
and try to see how many times you can use the tritone sub of two in the harmony to
create some moving cool blues lines in your jazz playing and then go out and practice that
and then the question i want you to answer today in the show notes or the comments down below is
what ways can you use tritone substitution in your jazz playing that you know of already
that can help us play more creative and interesting ideas in our jazz lines let me know
now obviously to apply tritone substitution to jazz standards that you know you have to know
some jazz standards so i'd love to give you a free guide that i have called learn jazz standards the
smart way which will help you learn jazz standards the most effective way in five simple steps
also give you a bonus free jazz standards mastery formula master class that i've come out with so
go to learnjazzstandardsthesmartway.com or you can go ahead and check that out in the screen up here
also if you want to learn more about tritone substitution i have another video that goes over
more scenarios where you can use tritone substitution so check it out on the screen
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like this video and found it helpful and look forward to seeing you in the next one