Tritones?

[Michael Henson]

I play at church exclusively and was wondering if you guys use tritones a lot and how you would go about incorporating them into your playing?

Thanks!

[stedtale]

I use them every time I play a dominant 7th cord and want to bring out the 3rd and 7th.

[jenderfazz]

Personally, I'd use it mostly as a passing tone to the fifth. It's pretty dissonant, which can be interesting. However I'm not well-versed in theory so I'm probably just ignorant to a lot of its best uses.

[SundanceChile]

Originally Posted by jenderfazz

It's pretty dissonant, which can be interesting. However I'm not well-versed in theory so I'm probably just ignorant to a lot of its best uses.

The tritone is essentially "the devil's interval". Gets a lot of use in Jazz and Rock, but the interval itself was actually banned in the Baroque era due to the thought that the sound would conjure the devil himself. Fun fact of the day.

[Michael Henson]

All the more reason to use it in church.....Mwahahaha!

[Michael Henson]

Numerically what is a tritone made up of?

[stedtale]

Originally Posted by Michael Henson

Numerically what is a tritone made up of?

could you repeat the question?

[rockwarnick]

Originally Posted by Michael Henson

Numerically what is a tritone made up of?

tritones are THREE whole steps apart...hence tri.

[DocBop]

I assume you are talking about tritone subsitutions and not just the interval (considered the Devil's interval at one point and banned by the church.)

I use tritone sub's all the time, but don't think I would be just throwing them in unless you and the rest of the band have agreed to it.

Using a tritone sub in a song is changing the harmony a fair amount so piano or other chordal instruments should be on board with you. If whole band is spicing up the harmony then works fine.

If using the interval in a bass line then put it on a weak beat and as a approach note to Root of the chord. That will work, but put the tritone interval on a strong beat and not resolving it, they may be looking for another bass play for next service.

Now in improvisation then I love using tritone subs so in the classic II-V-I progression lets say in key of C, so Dmi7-G7-CMa7. The common scale/modes would be D Dorian, G7 Mixolydian, C Ionian. real vanilla, all inside. You could change and add the tritone sub for G7, that would be Db7 and scale for a non-functioning dominant is Lydian b7. So now you play D Dorian, Db Lydian b7, then C Ionian. Adds a lot of cool chromatic notes and resolves on the I chord.

There are other things to do with tritone sub's but that is the common use.

[ryco]

Originally Posted by Michael Henson

Numerically what is a tritone made up of?

If you are talking about the interval, when people are saying "tritone" they are usually referring to the Major 3rd and the minor 7th" of the V7 chord (aka Dominant), ie F# and C in D7.

[mutedeity]

Originally Posted by ryco

If you are talking about the interval, when people are saying "tritone" they are usually referring to the Major 3rd and the minor 7th" of the V7 chord (aka Dominant), ie F# and C in D7.

Not necessarily, Ryco, tritones are generally recognised as dissonant intervals and as such tend to be used to create tension. In a Dominant chord this tension wants to be released to a more consonant chord which is the relative I or in the case of melodic and harmonic minor the i chord. This is the most obvious resolution since the leading tone is also manifest in the V7 chord as the relative 3rd degree. We can also use this to imply resolution to "non-scalar" tones. For example try this progression cm - G7 - F7 - bbm (B flat minor). The tension created by the tritone in the F7 chord that also implies the leading tone of the relative 3rd leads us back to a tonal centre, bbm, that does not exist inside the impiled scale. In this case C melodic minor.
However tritones can also create tension in other ways. If you look at blues and rock for example the b5 can create a sense of instability even when played as a melodic reference to the tonic that makes us want to move to a more consonant tone. This happens because mentally we are referencing the tonic to all the other tones we are playing whether we are actually playing the tonic or not.
Tritone substitutions are used generally because they are good ways to transpose. This is because tritones are non-transpositional intervals. That means that if you play the inversion of a tritone you still get a tritone. Therefore if you move from say B7 to F7 you see that the dissonant or tritonal element of those two chords are the same two notes, A and Eb. This will take the focus off the fact that you are also transposing other tones that may not necessarily be part of the established scale structure.
You can also look at tritones in other contexts such as Messiaen's modes of limited transposition where you are using scales made of, for example, major or minor triads that are a tritone apart. The WH and HW diminished scales are also examples of this kind of thing.

[ryco]

Thank you mutedeity! Yes , I agree with everything you said. Great post!

What I was expressing in my post lies in the word "usually" - I should have highlighted the word.

Just trying to keep it simple to help the OP with some very basic theory.

I appreciate the usefulness of chord subs and secondary dominants, etc, but all of this info may be over the head of what the OP was asking. Of course, I could be wrong.

peace

[Etbass]

As far as the sort of usefulness of tritones, there are some pretty simple and easy things to do with them.

Victor Wooten is a massive fan of popping a double stop tritone on the minor 3rd and major 6th, and then sliding it up a semitone.

Jaco uses tritone substitution to change between his D#7(#9) chord (Hendrix chord) to an A13 chord - the only difference between those two chords is the root note, and they're a tritone away from eachother.

Flea likes to go between the minor third, it's tritone (maj6) and the 5th - he does that in almost all of his solos, but if you're looking for it, there's a good example about 2:30 in Naked in the Rain.

If you're a Gershwin fan, his piece "I've Got Rhythm" is full of 7ths that, if you're doing it as a solo, you can change the root note to a tritone up or down (tritone substitution) to make some interesting changes. Also, that song's in Bb major, so 3 cheers for Bb!

[Petary791]

Whenever i'm playing in the dorian mode I like to play them between the minor 3rd and 6th.

[chicagodoubler]

Tritone by definition=
three whole TONES

as in

TRI TONE

Legend has it, the three tines in the devil's pitchfork are representative of the three steps in the tritone.

In the old stone churches, intervals would bounce back at the singers off the walls, like old timey gregorian chant era. When that interval of the tritone bounced back, it clashed with alot of other sounds. Before the tritone was banned, even the perect fourth was banned as an untreatable dissonance. Wow things have changed. I can't recall ever hearing a gospel band that didn't play tritones as a harmonic interval, on every single friggin song all day. And night...

Now you can theoretically do ANYTHING and get away with it. Thank you, tone rows..

[HaVIC5]

Originally Posted by SundanceChile

The tritone is essentially "the devil's interval". Gets a lot of use in Jazz and Rock, but the interval itself was actually banned in the Baroque era due to the thought that the sound would conjure the devil himself. Fun fact of the day.

While it was severely frowned upon in early church music, like gregorian chant and organum, by the Renaissance and definitely Baroque times, the tritone was a perfectly acceptable interval. In fact, most of Western music relies on the tritone for dissonance, which is used for tension/release. The tritone is what makes a dominant chord dominant, and from the Baroque onwards, the dominant-tonic relationship is basically the most important concept in all of Western music. I mean, if it was banned in the Baroque, you couldn't have that first towering dimisinished chord in the beginning of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor.

[GreyBeard]

Originally Posted by rockwarnick

tritones are THREE whole steps apart...hence tri.

It's an augmented 4th like C to F#. When used by itself it expresses the feeling (at least to me) of chaos and calamity. I’m sure it has a place in church music is used tastefully.

[Jimbob Jones]

I like to use them if the song I'm playing has a diminished or flat-fifth chord in it. IMHO it sounds better than the usual ol' minor third. (that is, if a double stop is appropriate)

[chicagodoubler]

The tritone sure does have a place in modern music. As Havic5 mentions, it's the essential component of any dominant harmony.

These chords and more contain a tritone inside of 'em:

7
7 b5 duh
7 #5
alt
half dim
whole dim
etc...

And regarding Bach's Tocatta- if you analyze enough of his music, you'll find not only every basic quality of chord we use today, but even some that are harsh to our ears when played out of context. If anybody's reading this and hasn't had the pleasure of playing some Bach, by golly, you're missing out.

[stedtale]

the devil! ...yep, it's true. that's what people used to think.


Without dissonance, harmony is meaningless.

Tritones are nice, and not bad, very useful in music.


Without them, where would David Lynch be?



And...from The Man: "There are no wrong notes...just better choices." -Monk