Transcripts
1. Advanced Theory Course Introduction: Hi, I'm Jamie Ellis, and welcome to my Skillshare
course on Advanced Theory. For the last few years,
I've been working as a professional
session musician. I've been tour across the globe with named artists working in London's West End and recording in some of the
UK's best studios. Now in that time, I've
used music theory to not only communicate well
with other musicians, but also better understand how music works and how that
applies to my instrument. So I'm here now to teach all of you
intermediate musicians the advanced music theory
concepts that I use on a daily basis as a
professional musician. Now in this course,
we're going to cover everything from advanced
scales like the harmonic and melodic minor to some of the out there scales like
altered and diminished. We're going to touch on re
harmonization techniques such as tritone substitutions, diminished substitutions
and secondary dominance, and we're going to even look at some other little pro
techniques that you can use to not only
songwrite better, but also better understand
your instrument. It's a nice, easy to follow step by step course taught by myself, and I'll make sure
that every concept is made as simple as possible
for you to digest. Can also keep coming back
and rewatch these videos so you can really get the
most out of this experience. Now, alongside the
lesson videos, I've also got some
practice exercises and some little things you can
use to assess your knowledge, which you can then submit
to me for feedback. And I've also got a
special free ebook, which you can access
using the link below, and that covers everything
music theory related from the beginning stuff
to the advanced stuff with nice easy diagrams
and explanations. So without further ado, I
hope you enjoy the course, and I will see you inside.
2. Major Scale Theory: So let's take a look
at the major scale in a little bit more detail towards the theory
side of things. So, as we've already
talked about, the major scale consists
of eight notes. So if I just draw on the
board, one, two, three, four, five, six,
seven, eight, right? In the key of C, we
would simply have C, D, E, F, G, A, B, and C. Now, there's your C major scale. Now we're going to use this
throughout this course as a nice reference point
when talking about other scales the major scale, we'll sort of call that
our home scale, right? And everything else
we'll refer back to is a nice easy comparison
because we've got no alterations at
all in that major scale. So we'll call each of
these notes scale degrees. So, for example, the G here, that would be the fifth degree, the third E here, that would be your third
degree for example. And then we can compare those nice and easily
as we go through. So now we understand
about scale degrees and we've got a major scale
written up here on the board. Let's take a deeper look
at the construction of the major scale itself
using tones and semitones. So, CTD is a tone D to E. Tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone. So tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone, be the
construction of a major scale. Now, when you look
at your fretboard, you can use that sort of pattern to work out the major scale. Obviously, in the scale shapes
that we've already used, but also along one string and
all those sorts of things. If you can internalize that
pattern, no matter what, if you're in a jam
and someone goes, Oh, we're in the KC,
and you're going, Oh, what was me scale shap? What was me scale
shape? Well, I know it starts on C. Oh, what
was the pattern? Oh, tone, tone,
semitone, tone to tone. Oh, okay. Oh, I can work out. Oh, bang. You're in. You're jamming.
You're happy days. Let's take this
further, and we'll harmonize our major scale
and turn it into chords. It's really important
to remember the major, minor construction of
a major scale, as, you know, when
you're songwriting, you can recall chords
really easily. If you're on a jam and someone
goes, Oh, it's 161645. What? One, six, four, five, one, six, four, five.
You got your chords. Great. Are they major or
minor? Oh, I can't remember. This is why it's really, really important
to remember all of this key information here is fundamental to everything else. So C is always major. We're in the key of
C major, and I'm going to draw that there
with a little triangle. Triangle will be major. I'm just gonna pop
that right up there. Major. I'm gonna use a little
dash for minor. And I'm going to use a
seven if it's dominant. And if you've seen our
seventh chord video, you'll understand
what dominant means. So major, minor minor, major, dominant, minor,
half diminished. Really important to remember
that because as I said, if someone goes one, four, five, six, that's our chord
progression, 1456. What they mean by that is we're using one, four, five, six, and you then know
that is C major, F major, G seven A minor. Able to recall chords
in a key straightaway, right off the cuff. Oh,
it's that. It's that. It's also known as the
Nashville number system if they start using
numbers like this. Really, really important, rather than going, you know, it
just speeds things up. If you've got jam or you're trying to
teach someone a song. Oh, it's A major or it's
G major, or it's this, it's that 14, five, six, one, two, three, four, five,
all that sort of stuff. Really, really easy way of
recalling chord progressions. Now, if you've seen
our video on keys, you'll understand what
relative major and minor is. And we talked about
how the relative minor always comes from
the sixth degree. And you can see
that here as well. C major, the relative minor, is A minor. It's
that sixth degree. So always the sixth of a major key is always
the relative minor. So if I was to construct
an A minor scale, you'd quite simply just
start from the sixth degree, and that's why the Aeolian mode is a mode of the major scale. Uses the same notes, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, A. That'd be your A minor
scale, for example. And you would simply with
the chord progression just start from chord six. So this would now be one,
one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, rather
than going CD EFG. And rather than me
right now, again, just explains that a
little bit clearer.
3. Major Mode Theory: Now let's talk about modes
in a little bit more detail. I want to talk a
little bit more about the theory around these
modes so you can better understand how they work as individual scales
and also how they interact with each
other in a sort of across the fretboard
sort of context. So as I said before,
we're going to use the major scale as our
sort of home scale, and we're going to
compare fit and else to this major scale. So I'm going to write
that first on the board. So we've got the Ionian scale. Which is also our major scale, same name, same thing. I'm going to write this out
in sort of constructions. We've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, there's my normal major
scale right there. Now the next mode is Dorian. So the Dorian mode, in
comparison to the major scale. This is always in comparison
to the major scale. We have got one, two. I'm gonna do it in red so
we can see the difference. We've got a flat three. We've
got a four. We've got five. We've got a major six. And
then we've got a flat seven. I put eight there or
something in the color. We've got a flat seven. So remember, the Dorian scale in comparison to the major
scale has a flat three. So it's a minor sounding mode, and it's got a flat seven. But what gives it sort of characteristic that
characteristic note, is that major sixth right there. Now, if you're improvising
with the Dorian mode, you can really sort of
spend some time around this sort of scale degrees here. Using that major six,
you're going to give it that sort of D Dorian sound. I'll tell you what I'm gonna do. Just to keep this really clear. I'm going to make that six a green because there's
your character note. That gives you
that Dorian sound. So moving on, we've got frigian. Frigian is our third
mode of the major scale. And we've got in comparison, we've got one, flat two. We've got flat three.
We've got four, five, and then we've
got a flat six, and we've got a flat seven. Again, in comparison
to the major scale, we have a flat
two, a flat three, a flat six, and a flat seven. And it's this flat two here. It's our color note. So spend some time around
here if you're going to improvise with a frigian scale. It's going to help sort
of emphasize that sort of modal sound. Moving on. We have Lydian. Now,
the Lydian mode is like the major mode, actually, like the major
scale, we will want to. Got a major third, so
it's a major mode. And then we've got a sharp four. Now that sharp four is
the character note. Okay. Then five, six,
seven, and eight. Sharp four, character
note in the Lydian scale. Now, some of you who already know the blue
scale might be like, Oh, sharp four, that's
just a flat five. So it's a major scale
with a blue note in it. Exactly. Exactly. So if you want to add a
little bit more of a spice to your
chord progressions and you're improvising
in C major, you know, and you
want a little bit I'm bored of the C major scale. I want to I don't know.
Let's try C Lydian, and then we'll throw
the sharp four in there, and it'll be
like, Oh, there we go. A bit more spice. It's got quite a magical sort
of sound to it this mode. Okay, moving on, Lydian, we have got Mixer Lydian. This is our fifth
degree, our fifth mode, meaning it's a dominant mode, and it's great for use
over dominant chords. So we've got one, two,
three, four, five, six, and then we've
got a flat seven, that gives us our
dominant sound. And then an eight. Got major third major mode.
And we've got flat seven. If we take the construction of a dominant chord, we've got one, three, five, flat seven, so you can see the dominant
chord or peggio in there. And that's why it's
really, really great to use this scale
over dominant chords. Moving on, we've
got the lean mode. Now, this is our sixth degree, so it's our relative minor
or our natural minor scale, which hopefully you're
already familiar with. So again, in comparison
to the ionian, we've got one, two, and then we've got a
flat three because it's a minor sounded mode. And then we've got four, five, flat six, flat seven, and then we've got
our eight. Like so. Now our final mode
is the lockero mode. It's the seventh mode
for the major scale. So in comparison,
again, we've got one. We've got flat two.
We've got flat three. We've got four. And then
we've got flat five, flat six, flat seven, and then we've got
our octave there. At eight. So hopefully, that sort of sheds some light on the difference between
all of these modes. Now, as we've said,
the modes are sort of variations of
the same scale, right? So if I was to play in
the key of C, C Ionian, and then aolan which would be A minor Aeolian from
the sixth degree, it's the same notes. C major A minus,
exactly the same notes. So when playing
throughout the fretboard, I wouldn't worry about, Oh, now I move to this now I move to this, now
I move to this. It's the same scale
in the same key. But a great time to use these scales individually
is when you're improvising. So if I was in a minor key
and I wanted to improvise, I'd usually use
the Aeolian mode. But if I wanted to add a
little bit more spice, I could also use the
Dorian and phrygian mode because you've got these sort
of character notes here. So just to sort of really
bring this point home, I'm going to change
all these numbers now, and we're going
to write out each mode all in the key of C, so you can see the differences between these modes again when they're all written
in the same key, and we can hopefully
sort of understand why you can use them
as individual scales, as well as sort of traversing
across the fretboard. Okay, so now I've written
out all of these modes here, all in the key of C. So we've already looked
at how we would construct these in terms of numbers and the numerical
differences between them, but I just wanted to explain
it again in the terms of note so we could
see everything in comparison to the same key. So we're now talking about these modes as individual scales, rather than sort of modes of the major scale, all
in the same key. And that's because when we
want to improvise with them, we can use them in sort
of tools on their own. So let's compare ionian
and mixed lydian. We've got all the
same notes, but we've got the flat
seven right here. And as we've talked
about before, that's why it would be great sounding over a dominant scale, a dominant chord,
rather than the onian. But if I was in a minor
chord progression, right? And I wanted to use my eolin, I'd use my lean here,
my minor third. But I could also
use my Dorian and phrygian because I've got
these character notes. I've still got my minor third, but I've got these
character notes. I've got major sixth and
I've got a flat two there. So these will sort of add an
extra little bit of spice. What we'll do is we'll have
a little jam with Ben and we'll sort of see how these
sort of sound in context. Okay, so we've talked
slightly about using mode not only to
traverse the fretboard, but also to use
them as individual scales to give us different
flavors in our improv. So I'm going to get Ben to
just comp on a G minor chord, and I'm going to switch
between the Gaolan, the G Phrygian, and
the G Dorian so you can hear the
different sounds you're going to give
in your improv. And I'll sort of let you know as we go which scale I'm using. Mm hmm. Mm. And
4. Transposing Music: As you progress on
your musical journey, you eventually
start playing with various other
musicians in bands, and you occasionally have to transpose songs into other keys. It's often due to the singer. If they have a bad day, if they've got a slight
cold or quite simply, if they just can't quite
reach those high notes, they'll sometimes ask you
to either raise or lower the song by a few keys just to make it easier
for them to sing. It's really important for
you to understand how to do that quickly
in a band setting. So let's take this chord
progression of C major. I've got C, A minor, F and G. The singer says, I'm struggling in that key. Can we put this in
the key of G instead? Not a problem. How
do we do that? First of all, let's work out what our chord
progression actually is. C would be our root.
That would be cord one, A minor. We know
that's chord six. F would be chord four and
G would be chord five. So we now understand
that we need to transpose a one, six, four, five chord progression from C into the key of G.
But to do that, we need to know what these
chords would actually be in G. So let's write
out the G major scale. So now I've got
my G major scale. I can very easily work out
how to transpose from C to G. All I have to do is
take coords one, six, four, five from C, and instead play them in G. So that would be
Cord one would be G, Cord six would be E, that'd be E minor, because obviously it's a
minor chord from six. Chord four would be C. And then chord five would
be G. Cord five, sorry, would be D. It really
is as simple as that. I've now taken a chord
progression in C, and I've now learnt how
to play in G. It's really important to
practice this is the faster you're able to
transpose between keys, the more time you have in your
rehearsals to get down to the actual important work of rehearsing with other bandmates. So take some songs
that you're familiar with and transpose
them into other keys. Use the circle of fifths to
help you if you get stuck.
5. Understanding Cadences: Let's have a chat
about cadences. Cadences are quite simply turnarounds at the end
of a chord progression, and they either leave
us feeling really resolved or a little bit uneasy, and they're great as
compositional tools for sort of inflicting different types of emotion and bringing
things full circle. So what sort of
cadences have we got? Well, we've got a
perfect cadence, which is the most common
sort of form of cadence. And that is a five to one. And what I mean by five
to one is if you've already watched our major
scale construction video, it's the fifth degree
resolving to the first degree. So in the key of C,
it would be G resolve into C. We've also got
an imperfect cadence. And that is 15. Now that feels unresolved, because obviously, that five wants to
pull back to the one. So it'll be C to G, for example, in the key of C. And
when you end on a G, it feels a bit like,
Oh, we're not finished. It's sort of hanging
a little bit. It is a bit uneasy.
That's great. It's used a lot in sort of there's like a suspenseful
moment and you're like, Dad, dah, and you're like, Oh, it wants to resolve,
but you don't quite. We've also got plagal cdences. Pagal cadences are 4-1. That sounds sort of
it's got a nice sort of holy sort of church esque
kind of sound to it. It's used a lot in
hymns, actually. Now, our final cadence is
an interrupted cadence, and that's where we go from
chord five to chord six. And it sounds like
someone's just sort of stormed through there
and go, Oh, hold on. We're not finishing
yet, you know? If you want to sort of tease up to the end of a
song, you tease up, and you go to the
five and you come storming in with
that sixth degree, it's like, we're gonna
finish, we're gonna finish. We're gonna finish.
Oh, no, we're not. We're gonna go
somewhere else instead. So let's hear how
these cadences sound. So here is a perfect cadence. Here's an imperfect cadence. Here's what a plagual
cadence sounds like. And here's what an interrupted
cadence sounds like. Now, let's expand a little bit on our perfect
cadence because these are used throughout
music, especially in jazz, they're really great little
turnaround for sort of having some improvisational fun on them because of
this 51 paw, right? You can get a lot of
tension in release here, especially as you
alter the five chord, you can sort of use them and there's more advanced scales, and it's going to
really sort of sound sophisticated out there and have a really strong pull
back to that one. But we can first
strengthen this cadence. If I put a second degree, going to indicate that in
lowercase Roman numerals, indicating that
the chords minor. So I've got two,
five, one, really, really common chord progression, really, really common turnaround
there, two, five, one. They're great little
backing tracks as well for improvising,
as we said, sort of following chord tones, peggi here into some sort
of altered scale here, perhaps, and resolving
back to your major scale. You can have a lot
of fun over these. And as we move into more of
the improvisational module, we'll talk a lot more about
this turnaround here.
6. Advanced Rhyhtms: Now let's take a look at
a few advanced rhythms. We've already looked at crotchets, quavers,
and semiquavers. But what we can do is alter
these beats even further to create some more interesting
rhythmic variation. So what I'm going to
do is start with ties. So we're in 44, and I've
got four crotchets. What I'm going to do is tie these two notes
together like so. Now, that combines
these rhythms. So for example, I've got
one, two, three, four. This beat here now
lasts for two beats because I've tied together
two singular crotchets. Now, why wouldn't we write
a minim underneath instead? Why wouldn't we
write this? That was the worst semiquaver ever,
but we get the idea. That's not even a semiquaver. So why wouldn't I write
it simply like this, crotch it, minim, crotch
it. So good reason. If you were to read
that, it's not very clear where the
beat sits in the bar, especially as you move to
more advanced rhythms, it becomes really difficult to differentiate your four beats. So what we like to imagine is an imaginary line that sits
down the middle of our bar. Now, it's really good practice to never have any beats cross that line because it just causes confusion when we're
looking at beat separation. So we'd use things
like ties just to make that notation nice and
clear for us to read. We're next going to
look at dotted notes. Now, as you can see here
next to this crotchet, I've got a tiny
little black dot. What that does, it's a
little confusing is it adds half the value
of the previous beat. So a crotchet is worth one beat. The dot is going to add an additional half a beat because half a
crotchet is a half. So this now is worth 1.5 beats. So when counting this,
we have got one, two would be in here, and then this quaver here lands
on the of beat two. One, two, and three, four, one, two, and three, four. Now we can dot other rhythms, and that's where sometimes
things can get a little bit complicated
when reading rhythm. If I draw a quaver
down here and.it, the dot would add half
the value of the quaver, half a quaver is a semiquaver. So this would really
look like this. We've got a quaver,
plus a semiquaver. So it would be worth
three quarters of a beat. If I dot a minim,
we've got a minim, plus half a minim,
which is a crotchet. So this equals three beats. Now, I realized in our
basic rhythm video, we didn't touch on
semiquaver rhythms, and that's 'cause it can
get quite complicated, especially when it
comes to accounting. There's a lot of notes
to consider at one time. We'll start simple and we'll
start building things up. So, looking at this
at first glance, it looks really complicated. I promise it's not once you break down the
beats individually. Let's start here.
Now, we already know a semiquaver is worth
a quarter of a beat, and we've got a
quaver rest here. So this would be one
E. That's our one. And then on the and,
we've got notes. So this rhythm here,
just this little section would be one e and h one and pretty easy so far. We've now got a four
bar of semiquavers, two, E, and h. Now let's take
a look at this beat here. We've got another quaver rest, but this time, at
the end of the beat. So we've got three E, and our and is on a rest. So this beat here
will be three E and, uh, we can also put semiquaver rests in the
semicuaver pattern itself. So let's break it down again. One or E is rested, and h one and h one and
that should be a four, actually, four and four
and four E and fury. And, so you can see how this
gets quite complicated, especially as you start breaking up these
rhythmic beams here. So this rhythm here
would sound like one and 20 and three and four, and, uh, this is
quite complicated, we've put a lot of
different examples down below for you to practice. Now, triplets are interesting. They squeeze three notes in the space of two rhythmically. So if I was to write three
crotchets like cell, and I replace these first
two notes with a triplet, we basically gain an extra note. We notate it like cell. Now, this can get a little bit complicated when we count these. So what I'm going
to do is compare this to our standard down
beat one, two, three, four. We've already got beats
three and four right here. And we know beat one is gonna
be the very first note. Now, triplets have got a dad dad dad, dad
dad, dad, dad dad dad. It's like a funny little
swing fill sort to them. So this would actually one and, and that and there
would be the two. So it'd be one and two, E, and, and you're actually
only playing on one uh, and at one and three, four, da da da, three, four, da, da, da, three, four. Squeezing three notes
into the space of two. We can also triplet quavers, so let's take a look at those. Now, triplet quavers are faster. So we're gonna count
these up as one, and, two, and And then we've got beat three and four here
to finish off the bar. So one anda, two anda, three, four, da da, da, da, da, da, three, four. Pa, pa, pa, pa. Quite often to see whole
bars with triplet equaors, especially in some
sort of blues and sort of that sort of
ul sort of music. Da, da, da, da, da,
da, da, da, da, da, da, da, the triplet
fill is fantastic. But it can get a little bit complicated to read and
messy on our music. So we can sometimes change
the time signature to make it a little bit easier to read, but we'll
come to that later. Now, as you can
imagine, there are loads of different
rhythmic combinations. But after a while, you'll
start to notice patterns. Here's a few common
ones that I see really frequently on my
professional career. After a while, you'll start
to recognize these patterns and counting them will
become a lot easier. So it's really, really
important to spend time developing
your inner clock, being able to count
all of these rhythms.
7. Understanding Harmonic Minor: So let's take a
quick look behind the theory of the
harmonic minor scale. Now, I've got on the board here a regular natural minor because we're going
to use that as our home base for all the
alternate minor scales. Now, a normal minor scale in comparison to the
major scale is one, two, flat three, four, five, flat six, flat
seven, eight, right? So, in fact I'm going to write
that down below in green. So we can compare again, one, two, flat three, four, five, flat six, flat seven, and eight, right? Our harmonic minor scale
has got a major seventh. So we've still got
the flat three and the flat sixth interval, but we've got a major
seventh, so I'm going to write that just down below
so we can compare the two. So this is natural minor.
And here's harmonic. So we've got C, D, E flat, F, G, A flat. We've got a regular B,
and then we've got C. Comparing our harmonic
minor to the natural minor, we've still got one, two, flat three, four,
five, flat six. But as you can see here,
we've got a B flat here. We've got a B we've
raised the seventh, we've got a major seventh, and
then we've got our eighth. And it's that major
seventh that gives that harmonic minus of Middle
Eastern characteristic.
8. Understanding Melodic Minor: Let's take a look at the
construction of a melodic minor. Now, there's two ways
you can look at this, and I personally like to
compare it to the major scale. Now, here's a C major scale. Our melodic minor is simply a major scale
with a flat three. You could also, here's the
other way of looking at it, think about it as a minor scale with a major six and a
major seventh interval. Depends on what scale you
prefer to compare them against. So right in the melodic
minor down below here, we had C, D. We'd have E flat.
That's our flat third. We've got four. We've got F. We've got G, A, B, and C. So in
numerical terms, one, two, flat three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Entirely your choice, what you prefer to reference
this against. Like I said, major scale
with a flat third, or it's a minor scale with a ray sixth and seventh.
That's it in principle.
9. Understanding The Altered Scale: Now, our altered scale is a
mode of the melodic minor. So let's first just have
a quick chat about that. Our C melodic minor, as we've already looked
at, is one, two, flat, three, four, five, major six, major
seventh and eighth. Now, as we've already
just discussed, the altered scale is a mode. It's the seventh mode
of the melodic minor. So it would simply just be
B to B, this order, right? Same notes, exactly
the same notes. But where this works
is where we compare now these nodes against
a B seventh chord, we'd use a altered scale
against a dominant chord. Now, we've got our root here and we've got a C and a D. Now, in comparison to
the B major scale, it's a flat two
and a flat three, but in comparison
to the B seven, it gives us a flat
nine and a sharp nine. We've also then got F and a G, which would give us a flat
five and a sharp five. Those are other two alterations. So you can see how
playing this scale over a dominant seventh would then imply an altered
B seventh chord, especially when you hit
those flat two sharp two, flat five and sharp
five intervals.
10. Understanding Secondary Dominants: So I want to start talking
about something heavy. I want to look into
re harmonization and more unconventional harmony. As we sort of progress
as a musician and move into more complicated
sort of song structure, maybe jazz standards
or maybe just want to add some extra spice
into our songs, we want to break out of
conventional harmony. Now we do that to sort
of open up the canvas. We can introduce
some altar chords, some chords that
aren't necessarily in the key to give us some extra little sort
of scalic playground. We can add some extra
funny notes that are all. It's gonna turn their heads. You know, everyone's gonna ha. You know, Robin
Ford's great at this, Scott Henderson, all
sorts of fusion players. A lot of implicate all of
these sort of concepts. So let's start with talking
about secondary dominance. It's probably the easiest
form of re harm, really. If I've got a standard 251
progression in C, right? So I'm going to go D minor, it's two, five G, and one C. I can add some tension there
by altering my five chord, so I can go D minus seven, I can go G seven, sharp five, and then I
can go C major seven. I can add some
ninths D minus nine. Like so. So we're going to start adding some sort of extra spice. The secondary dominant is a dominant for it's
a dominant chord for the chord you're leading to. So, for example,
if I want to start on D minus seven, and I go to G, I could turn that
D minus seven into a D dominant seven
because that would be the five of G. And
that would add some tension as I
move towards the G, and then the G is the
dominant chord moving towards the C. So I could comp, like D minus seven. We could say that
further. We could add a secondary dominant to the D. So the dominant
of D would be A. So I could add an A seven,
and then I could go to D minor and then D seven and
then G seven and then C. And so on. You could go
round and round and round. A really great
example of this would be to add a little bit tension in a standard core progression. So if I play C minor
and I want to go to E flat major and then
we'll go to A flat major, and then we'll go to G seven. That'll be our core
progression I'll turn around. I notice that I've got an
E flat major seven there, and that will be the dominant
for A flat major seven. So I could turn
that to a dominant seven and add a
secondary dominant. That sounds quite nice. At a passing chord,
perhaps, wearing key. C. Cord two would be this
D minus seven flat five. That's cord three. Make it dominant secondary dominant.
Leading to the next corner. You can see how it's
just going to add a little bit of extra piza, a bit of color, a little bit of spice to your
core progressions. It's gonna give an
improviser more room, more headroom to add tension
notes to add outside things. It's really gonna elevate from that advanced player to
a true professional.
11. Understanding Tritone Substitution: Let's take a look at
tritone substitutions. Kind of self
explanatory in a way. We've already
discussed what triton was back in our dominant video. The tritone is made
up of three tones, hence tritone, and it
comes between the seventh, the flat seventh and our
major third interval. So what we can do is
we can substitute a dominant cord for another dominant chord that's three tones away, tritone away. So for example, a tritone away from G seven would
actually be C sharp seven. Let's just count up
just to prove that. So we've got G. We'll
go up a tone to A. Let's go up another tone to B, and then we'll go up our
third final tone to C shut. So what we can do in a
standard 251 progression is I've got D, my two. Normally, I play G,
my dominant seven, and then I resolve
to a C major seven. But instead, I can substitute that G dominant seven
for a tritone sub, and then you've got
a nice chromatic baseline of voice leading, a little bit like what we had in our diminished substitution. But this time with
a tritone sub, you can see how
that leads nicely back to our root chord there.
12. Understanding Diminished Substitution: Bild on this further. Let's
add diminished substitutions. What I'm going to do is replace a dominant chord with
a diminished seventh chord. Now, this works because
diminished seventh chords are built up of minor thirds and kind of outline
an altered chord. For example, if I've
got a G dominant chord, I can substitute that. For a B diminished seven chord. I try to visualize this is play a diminished seventh chord from the third of
your dominant chord. So if I was in A, third
of A would be C sharp, so I'm going to play a C
sharp diminished seven. If I'm in G, my third of G is B, so I'm gonna play a
B diminished seven. It basically creates a G
seven flat nine chord. The B would be my third of
G. I've got an F there, which is my flat seven. I've got an A flat, which
acts as a flat nine. And then I've got a D there, which is my fifth of G. So
all of that, that B seven, B diminished seven over G
makes a G altered chord. And that's why this
substitution works. Now, I can take that
further because as we've already discussed
with diminished harmony, diminished chords are made up of minor third intervals,
and they're symmetrical. So I could play B
diminish seven. I could play D diminish seven. I can play an F diminish seven. I can actually play G sharp, diminish seven. So
maybe sound like this. You can hear that
really adds intention, especially as you go up through the minor
third intervals. It's a little bit cliche, so I wouldn't necessarily
always do that. But you can have
some fun with this. So let's go back to
that chord progression we were using earlier
for secondary dominance. I'm going to keep them
in this progression, and then I'm going to add
some diminished substitutions just to show you how it
can add even more spice. Take it further. Rather
than descend, we descend. They're also great for passing from major
chords to minor chords. So if I was to take
a C major seven, and I was going to move
to a D minus seven, I could use a C sharp
diminished seven as a passing chord because that C sharp implies a seven
flat nine chord. So we've got that diminished
substitution of A seven. So what we're
basically taking there is we're taking a
secondary dominant, which is our A seven, and then we're substituting it to a
C sharp diminished seven. So does sound like so. You can hear how that's got a
really nice voice leading. You go in. You got that
chromatic bassline. You've also got that
dominant tension to take you into the next chord.
Jamie Ellis Guitar, Learn From A Pro... Play Like A Pro
