Talk:Tritone substitution

Coltrane changes
The last sentence claims "Tritone substitutions are a defining part of Coltrane changes", but I don't understand why they're related. Coltrane changes involve moving the key center by major thirds; they don't have tritone substitutions built in. You can apply tritone substitutions to Coltrane changes, but that's not any different from applying them to any ii-V-I progression.--Rictus 7 July 2005 08:03 (UTC)


 * I agree completely with Rictus, "Tritone substitutions are a defining part of Coltrane changes" is untrue. You could put a tritone substitution into Coltrane changes, but it is is in no way a "defining part".  This is a common misconception about Coltrane changes.  I defy anyone to find me a tritone sub in the definative changes of Giant Steps or Countdown.

Article mergers
Tritone substitute, tritone substitution and substitute dominant all seem to describe the same thing, but using different words and illustrations. Someone musically competent should take whatever's valuable and make one article out of it. --Alvestrand 16:57, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I took a shot at it. -- ForteTuba 00:10, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Being new to this material, I found the combining of tritone substitution and substitute dominant into one article a bit confusing given the examples. The substitute dominant section and examples do not mention tritones at all - maybe they should be in a separate article? Similarly, the twelve-bar blues example has a tritone substitution for the I7 chord, not for the dominant chord, which leads me to think tritone substitution and substitute dominant are quite conceptually different - that substitute dominants are sometimes, but not always, tritone substitutions, and that tritone substitutions have functions other than as substitute dominants. (I am new to this material, so not an expert) 70.40.164.247 (talk) 04:24, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

German 6th
There is a statement that Classical musicians would notate the TriToneSub as a German6th chord. I would like opinions of other Classical theorists concerning this. First of all, it rarely occurs in Classical music, except in a Jazz context. It is not used the same way or voiced the same way in Classical and Jazz. i.e. the TriToneSub is notated differently and usually resolved differently. I would think that Classical notation would be more like a V7/bv (a Dominant of the bV) as in Jazz notation, the root is considered to be the b6 of the scale and not the #4 of the scale as in the German6th notation. The notation of the German6th implies specific voice leading and generally a different resolution than in Jazz. Jazz does not usually use the Cadential 6/4 chord as it the more common resolution of the Ger6 chord. In order to show the function of the chord as used in the Jazz context in a Classical analysis, the V7/bV (or what ever /x would be relevant in a particular example) certainly is more accurate of a description of what it is and also distinguishes it from the Gr6 as well it should. In the rare case that you would see a chord spelled #4 b6 1 b3 in a Jazz context, it would of course be prober to call it a Gr6 but I have never seen such an occurrence. LetsJustSeeClearly. (talk) 19:27, 25 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Perhaps the different use is why they would notate and name it differently. Hyacinth (talk) 19:40, 9 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I wouldn't go so far as to say it rarely appears in classical music except in a Jazz context. If it were used most often in a "jazz context," it seems the chord would be voiced the same way. Also, the wikipedia article on the augmented sixth compares the Fr+6 with the Tritone Sub, rather than the Gr+6


 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_6th#French_sixth_sonority_as_dominant
 * The two articles should agree as to which. Jmckaskle (talk) 20:42, 24 February 2009 (UTC)


 * The article on augmented sixths makes the argument, in simplified terms, that the Fr+6 is enharmonic to a root position dom7#11 (Lydian Dominant) without the 5th which is arguably the most common rendering of the Tritone Sub. The Gr+6 is enharmonic to a dom7 in root position with the 5th, from which arise voice leading difficulties and no #11. The example provided in this article refers to the Gr+6 but shows an It+6, enharmonic to a root position dom7 with no 5th and no #11th. If no one objects, I would like to change the reference to either a Fr+6 or +6 in general, and with the Fr+6 comparable to the Lydian Dominant.Jmckaskle (talk) 17:59, 25 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I find it a little confusing to call the D-flat–F–A-flat–B chord ″a German sixth″ in this article. While it resolves like a Classical Gr+6, it's transposed up a fourth from where a Gr+6 is generally understood to happen. (In C, the German sixth would be A-flat–C–E-flat–F-sharp.) One of the cool things about the chord built on D-flat is that it uses 3 notes from the Neopolitan chord (N6) (just drop the B-natural). Can the article say ″resolves like a German sixth, but built on flat second scale degree″? I don't mind if the similarity to N6 isn't brought up, but to just call it a German sixth is a little confusing.2600:6C46:6400:1077:31C2:7FDD:F6E9:9F38 (talk) 00:37, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Requested audio
I have added two audio examples to the article. Hyacinth (talk) 01:29, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Substitute Dominants?
I'm a student at Berklee College of Music. One of the frustrating things about this school is how often Berklee uses their own terminology rather than the widely accepted terminology - here, tritone substitutes are called "substitute dominants", analyzed as "subV7". I understand that Berklee is an exception to the rule (as it often is), but seeing as the school does tend to exert a rather notable influence on a lot of the jazz world and has published plenty of material using their set of terminology, would it be notable to identify the term "substitute dominant" as a synonym for "tritone substitute", or is this too specific?

Glassbreaker5791 (talk) 17:48, 9 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Thinking about the function of a tritone sub as a kind of substitute dominant is a good way of thinking partly because it alleviates some ambiguity as I talked about a bit up the page (though it isn't really ambiguous in that case as augmented sixth functions are usually thought of as specific to a style). Using the term "substitute dominant" to refer specifically to this one function probably isn't a very good idea though because Jazz is all about dominant substitutions which can be more complex or even similar in principle to higher-order functions since they're composable. See Chord_rewrite_rules. But even without a mathematical analogy, a ii - V is usually described as "substituting" for the V.


 * I've never heard of them referred to as "sub-V" outside of Wikipedia even at North Texas, probably because there's almost never a need to dictate them explicitly, it's just implied that they can replace a dominant function especially a ii - V (along with many other possible substitutions). I suppose if you think it's noteworthy and used widely enough it wouldn't hurt to mention. Ormaaj (talk) 01:25, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Wallace Hartley
Quoting Wallace Hartley: "Apart from his short tenure as leader of the band on the Titanic, Hartley is also known for introducing the tritone substitution to ballroom dance music."

Clearly there's already citations requested on this page for "introducers". Just adding another one... Mark Hurd (talk) 01:29, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

large quick-n-dirty edit: removed "substitute dominant" content
The article as i found it suffered from off-topic and confusing "substitute dominant" content, which i've removed. (I invite further cleanup, etc.) A few main problems: Hope this helps, "alyosha" (talk) 20:30, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure about the editors who added the material, but for sure readers could be confused about the difference between "dominants" as in V chords and "dominants" as in ♭7 chords.
 * The article is about tritone substitution, not the overlapping but separate topic of substitute dominants. Tritone subs can be for chords of any function, not just V's -- as the 12-bar example shows with the tritone sub for a tonic chord. And substitute V's don't have to be tritone subs, as the examples in the now removed "substitute dominant" section showed -- none of the three were tritone subs. These are two different topics, with "substitute dominants" deserving a separate article, perhaps mentioned here only and clearly as one common application of tritone subs.
 * Whereas the article as i found it had substitute dominants the first thing defined, mixed in with the tritone sub definition as if they were synonymous, and the first section of the article.
 * There was general analysis material under the ii-V-I example that i moved to analysis.

Augmented Sixth chords
Augmented Sixth chords are built on the ♭VI of the key. The phrase “known in the classical world as an augmented sixth chord” is not correct. The two examples under Summary are augmented sixth chords in the key of F, and neither of the examples is a perfect cadence. The Schubert example below that does not employ an augmented sixth chord. It is a dominant-seventh chord with a flatted fifth, in second inversion. While its pitches are equivalent to a Fr⁶, its function is not. Simply put, a tritone substitution (or dominant substitution) is not the same as an augmented sixth chord. Most of the other information is quite good, and more extensive than I had anticipated. Darsn Qeyl (talk) 21:02, 13 July 2019 (UTC)