Learning tritones substitutions at 52?

[incubus]

Can't explain that

It's weird though because at one point in time I knew all the notes of a fretboard (all fretboards) and was pretty crack at the basics of theory (well, I never studied jazz, obviously). Then there has been a long long LONG time of me being a "know it all" but forgetting how to ride a bike, if you know what I mean.

Anyways, I love discovering something, time to go practice my half-whole scales too

[Aloysius]

Throw in a few 'half demented' diminished chords while you're at it.

[incubus]

Baby steps, baby steps

[Aloysius]

[jancivil]

I learned this by accident, from a Mickey Baker chord book (guitar, in case ya don't know from Mickey Baker books). The setup was take a minor 7th construction with an 11th above the third, and the minor 7 in it come down a half-step but the top two don't move: so [fr. bottom] D C F G to Db Cb F G (then C Bb Eb F in this lesson). The new chord Db7b5 is dominant of C [aka G7b5 if you like (just call Cb 'B')]. My father came in the room while I was doing it to say 'That's Johnny Smith key' not really knowing wtf was it but recognizing the sound.

[VicDiesel]

I too discovered this one on my own, observing that a C7 with lowered fifth was the same (enharmonically) as a Gb7 with lowered fifth (I had pretensions of being a composer, so I was doing a lot of noodling on the piano). At the time I didn't listen to jazz yet, so I didn't know about changing the ii-V-I to ii-IIb-I yet.

Victor.

[jancivil]

I was probably 18. Around that time people I hung out with sometimes had pretty much moved to listening mainly to jazz and I knew a few who had always been jazz cats. I didn't feature myself as a jazz player although I was raised up in it. Mickey Baker there I don't think called that anything, it was a few kind of cheap tricks you pick up, seems like it was tablature.

Shortly thereafter I would always run into this jazz sax guy at community college who was in 'Jazz Reharmonization' while I was doing 1st and 2nd year Harmony simultaneously. So I got 'Tristan Chord*' while he was getting the flat 5 substitution principle... It seems like I didn't have enough piano competence to be in that course.

* take F and D from iv in A minor: raise D [6th] to D# [Aug 6], [appoggiatura G# for->] A; 'French 6th' contains 'B' and this resolves to E7. Same kind of move only prepared differently and obtained in that voice-leading.

[incubus]

I've always been so diatonic, so for me it's a revelation that I should have made 30 years ago, but just didn't.