Tritone sub for a minor chord
I was reading www.thejazzpianosite.com/jazz-piano-lessons/jazz-chords/passing-chords/
The article writes:
Tritone (of next chord) | CMaj7 - A?7 | Dm7 |
Is this a mistake? As far as I am concerned, it's not possible for a minor7 chord to contain an interval of six semitones. Because of that, you can't perform tritone substition on Dm7.
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Tritone (of next chord) | CMaj7 - A?7 | Dm7 |
First look at the plain progression...
Original Chord Progression | CMaj7 | Dm7 ||
...to that the passing chord is added (generically I call it "?")
Original Chord Progression | CMaj7 ? | Dm7 ||
...so A?7 fills in the ? as the passing chord. It's root A? is a tritone away from the target chord Dm7. (This is not a case of tritone substitution, another jazz harmony idea, the similar naming could be confusing.)
The author is coy about the voicing of the passing chords...
Note: That both the chord and the bass-line movement are important when transitioning between chords. You want both to be smooth. I will have more to say about this in future lessons.
A very quick review of the chart shows all the passing chords can be voiced so that the bass will either be a common tone with one of the two chords of the simple two chord progression or a chromatic half step between them. All other voices should move the minimal distance.
All the basses probably should be:
C C D
C C# D
C Db D?
Except for...
Approach #1 (diatonic) | CMaj7 - Em7 | Dm7 ||
...where the bass should probably be C D D
I'm taking an approach the bass of the passing chord should not anticipate (be the same tone) as the bass of the target chord.
I would like to add to the existing answers a possible motivation for the chord Ab7 as a "passing chord" between Cmaj7 and Dm7. The "reason" that it is a tritone away from the target chord doesn't really explain anything, at least not to me. What I hear is indeed a tritone substitution, but of course not of Dm7 (because that chord isn't substituted), but of D7. That D7 chord is a secondary dominant of G7, and G7 could follow that Dm7 chord to make it a full II-V in C major. However, even if G7 doesn't follow, the Dm7 as a first part of that standard II-V unit can represent that unit a certain way because our ears are so used to hearing it. Note that Dm7 could also be heard as a G7sus4 sound (without root). So when listening to that progression I do hear Ab7 as a tritone sub leading to the II-V unit Dm7-G7, even if G7 never comes, and that why it works well, at least for me.
This article is about passing chords, not tritone substitutions. The excerpt you showed,
Tritone (of next chord) | CMaj7 - A?7 | Dm7 |
simply indicates that one option for inserting a passing chord between Cmaj7 and Dm7 is to insert a chord, Ab7, that is a tritone away from the next (or second) chord, Dm7.
The current use of the term "tritone substitution" is really a conflation of two separate ideas: one in which two chords share a tritone, and another in which two chords have roots that are a tritone apart.
When we're dealing with chords like dominant sevenths, both definitions apply: a C7 chord has the tritone E/B♭, which happens to be the same tritone involved in the chord built on the root a tritone away, G♭7 (which has B♭ and F♭). But when we're dealing with something like a minor triad, only the latter definition applies, because there is no tritone in the chord.
So in an instance like this one with a minor seventh chord, since there's no tritone in the chord, we just build a chord a tritone away. Since we're looking at Dm7, that tritone away is A♭7.
(See also Must a tritone substitution use a dominant functioning seventh chord?)
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