The Diminished Scale Is A Pathway To Many Substitutions Some Consider To Be Unnatural

Many guitarists are familiar with the classic ii-V-I progression.
Figure 1: ii-V-I

It's a tried and true sequence of chords, but it can get a bit... vanilla. One way of spicing it up is borrowing the Vb9 chord from harmonic minor.
Figure 2: ii-Vb9-I

If you play Figure 2 on your guitar, you'll notice that the second chord is simply a fully diminished 7th chord. This is an easy way of voicing a G7-flat 9 chord on guitar without playing the root. D is the fifth, A-flat is the flat 9, B is the third, and F is the seventh. Playing this chord is as easy as raising the root of the vanilla V7 voicing. Don't forget that A-flat is the flat 9.

Since a diminished 7th chord may be spelled with any of the four tones as the root, why can't we consider any of these four tones to be the flat 9? For instance, if F is the flat 9, this is an E7 flat 9 chord. If B is the flat 9, this is a Bb7-flat 9. If D is the flat 9, this is a Db7 flat 9.

To take it a step farther... If this is an E7 flat 9 instead of G7 flat 9, who's to stop us from substituting an E7 for the G7? 

Figure 3: ii-III-I. (G13b9)

...or a Db7, which just happens to be the tritone sub.

Figure 4: ii-bII-I. (G7b5 b9)

...or a Bb7, also known as the backdoor sub.

Figure 5: ii-bVII-I. (G7b9 #9)

Now that I mention it, shouldn't the tritone sub be considered the back door and the bVII and III, the side doors? Any way, these subs sound very hip, thus I suggest practicing them in every key, every inversion. They are all sonorities which live in the diminished scale. I recommend my previous article on diminished scale subs for information on where these sounds come from.

ii-III7-I


The above is an example of how I practice these ii-V subs. This pattern cycles through every key and may be applied to any of the four possible dominant chords.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Drop Voicings Part 1: Introduction

Image
In part 1 of this article, we will identify a challenge that is inherent to the guitar and suggest a solution: Drop Voicings. Then we will go into depth about the most common example: Drop-2.  In part 2, we will dissect all the types of drop voicings. In part 3, we will learn a practical exercise that will incorporate the drop voicings into your harmonic vocabulary.  If you are curious about what "Drop-2" or "Drop-3" means, this article is for you. If you do know what those terms mean, you might find some additional insight here. To start, here are the four inversions of a C Major 7 chord:   Fig 1: Close Voicings These are called the "close voicings" because the notes are as close together as possible. If you look at the top and bottom notes of each inversion, you'll find that the notes span an interval less than an octave. For example, root position has the interval C-B, which is a Major 7th. 1st inversion has the interval E-C, which is a minor 6th. T
Read more

The Secrets of the Diminished Scale that Theory Professors Don't Want You to Know About

Image
The diminished, also known as the "Octatonic" scale is known for its symmetry which is achieved by a strict alternation of half-step, whole-step, half-step, whole-step etc. G diminished scale One of the many fascinating facts about the diminished scale is its eight tones can be organized into two fully diminished 7th chords, a half step away. The two diminished chords that comprise the octatonic scale On top of that, if we invert any diminished 7th chord, we get the exact same intervals of the original chord, which results as the same shape on guitar shifted up three frets. For example, the G diminished chord above becomes B-flat diminished. B-flat diminished 7th With these two facts in mind, it can be extrapolated that any octatonic scale may be harmonized with nothing but diminished chords, as such: Fig 4: Harmonized G Octatonic Scale Yet this scale hides much more than just diminished chords. It has minor 7th, dominant 7th, major 7 sus4 #11, an
Read more

CESH Of The Century!

Image
You might've read my previous article on common tone diminished chords (a secret technique to spice up your chord progressions) .  If not, click here to check it out!  The following is a continuation of that article. The year is 2018 and everyone is talking about the B-flat Major7 chord with a C in the bass. Is it a 9th chord in 1st inversion or a sus 13th chord? It's the 2k18 sound . Who cares! I'm more concerned about CESH. CESH is just a fancy acronym for Chromatic Embellishment of Static Harmony . You every read through a boring chart that is something like G7 for 4 bars, followed by C7 for 4 bars? CESH is a way of embellishing such a progression so that one doesn't fall asleep on the gig. While working on common tone diminished chords for my previous article, I realized that chords like these were an effective tool for incorporating CESH. Let's start with a G7 chord: Ex 1: G7 Boring, huh? There's a few different ways of making it more interes
Read more