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.



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