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Chord substitution suggestions


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Posted

Hello, I have been doing a little searching and didnt really find anything, so I was wondering if anyone knew of any good sites that had chord charts of substitutions for the basic chords. I am beginning to play solo more and more and want to learn some really full and jazzy type chords. Anything would help, website, chord names, how to form them, which ones sound best together, what is good to play with singing. Thanks in advance, Ryan.

Posted

Here's a list I came up with. The underlined chord listed at the top of each section is the original chord, and the chords listed beneath in bullet style are substitutes that work with it.


http://gozips.uakron.edu/~jjp14/subs.pdf


(Many of those subs don't work well if they're used in root position. For many of them, their inversions sound much better for substitutes)

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Posted

Holy cow! I've seen that sub PDF before. What more do you need than that?

+100 for Chord Chemistry too. There's a wealth of knowledge in that book that everyone should know.

For "new explorers" I can't say enough about this littel site: http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/3573/lessons.html

The Jazz to Blues, and the Swing Chords will get you going nicely on the style. They have great way of taking blues and rock players and showing them they can use what they already know and do just a little bit more with it and gets the jazz fow flowin'.

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Posted

One great substitutor is Joe Pass. His boks and videos are great. This is something I copped from him:


In a common Imaj7-vi7-ii7-V7 progression, in the key of C (Cmaj7-Am7-Dm7-V7) you can change all those minor chords to dominant7 chords to get this progression:

Cmaj7-A7-D9-G13...

Then you can apply the b5 substitution idea do get this (look the b5 substitution up on the Internet):

Cmaj7-Eb9-D9-Db7

Next you can substitute/replace Cmaj7 with an Em11 chord to get this...

Em11-Eb9-D9-Db9...and repeat..

So, now you are basically playing chromatic chords.

So all thogether you could play:

...Cmaj7-Am7-Dm7-G13...the next time Cmaj7-A7-D9-G13...and the next time Em11-Eb9-D9-Db9

Then change them around internally too, that'll keep you busy and you'll never lose sight of the original progression.

Plus you can alter those dom7 chords just about anyway you want and they will still sound pretty damn decent.

or...

Try replacing the dom7 chords with a dimished chords, like...

Cmaj7-Gdim7-F#dim7-Fdim7

(I think that's right, don't have my guitar with me)

And, any note in the dimished chord could be the root of the chord, so things get pretty wild, pretty quick.

Then mix things up between all these ideas, like so:

||: Cmaj7 / Em11 / | Eb9 / Gdim7 / | D9 / F#dim7/ | Db9 / Fdim7 / :||

or

|| Cmaj7 / Em11 / | A13 / Eb9 Gdim7 | D9 / F#dim7 / | G13 Fdim7 Db9 / ||

Again, just mix them up. They're all fairly interchangable after you start experimenting.

And mix them with the other all inclusive progress we did earlier:

...Cmaj7-Am7-Dm7-G13...the next time Cmaj7-A7-D9-G13...and the next time Em11-Eb9-D9-Db9

Mix that with all these diminished possiblities and you will sound like a master :)

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Posted

Awesome. Thank you all very much. These are going to help tremendously. It seems like i have heard about the Chord Chemestry book before, so i am definately going to go check that one out. Thanks.

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