At my workshop we briefly dipped into talking about tritone substitutions and this nugget came out. On tour in South America, a pianist found a young girl who sounded remarkably like Bill Evans. He asked her what in the world she was doing to get that 'Bill Evans' sound. The girl replied she just did what her dad taught her. She just played different triads above the written chord to get flat fives, flat nines, etc. Contrasting triads will touch on different notes outside the diatonic foundation to give some moody tension. When comping, some of these triads paint in beautiful colors... others will be pretty spicy, better for stabbing and resolving more quickly.
A simple example... if you have a Major C, or even a C7, on the chart, you can play the triad a full step up: D, F#, A. This gives you the b5, the 13 and the 9.
If you play the 6th major triad over a root( e.g., A, C#, E over Cmaj), you get the 13th, b9 and the 3rd.
If you take the tritone of C and play that triad (F#, A#, C#), you get the b5, b9, and b7. A good dominant run could involve alternating between the triads of C and F#.
It sounds more complex than it really is. It's just putting a shape you already know over a chord you already know. Experiment to see which work and how. You can use it with comping or building solos.
I will be experimenting with different triads over chords to see how they work together.
A simple example... if you have a Major C, or even a C7, on the chart, you can play the triad a full step up: D, F#, A. This gives you the b5, the 13 and the 9.
If you play the 6th major triad over a root( e.g., A, C#, E over Cmaj), you get the 13th, b9 and the 3rd.
If you take the tritone of C and play that triad (F#, A#, C#), you get the b5, b9, and b7. A good dominant run could involve alternating between the triads of C and F#.
It sounds more complex than it really is. It's just putting a shape you already know over a chord you already know. Experiment to see which work and how. You can use it with comping or building solos.
I will be experimenting with different triads over chords to see how they work together.
| billevanstriads.pdf |
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