Tritone Substitutions

A ‘tritone substitution’ is a popular trick for making your music sound more sophisticated. I’ll show you a couple of videos with lots of examples. But since I’m mathematician, let me start with the bare-bones basics.

The fifth note of the major scale is called the dominant. In the key of C it’s G.

A dominant seventh chord is a 4-note chord where you start at the dominant and go up the major scale skipping every other note. In the key of C it’s the notes in boldface here:

G A B C D E F

Belo...