Chord Substitutions Chattanooga Dulcimer Festival prepared by: Katie Moritz For supporting files, visit: www.katiemoritz.com/workshops/chordsubs

Chord substitutions are a great way to take a simple tune and make it “your own”. Subbing chords is not a good idea during a jam unless it is a simple substitution and the jam is small enough for you to effectively notify others of what you’re doing. This technique is really great for solo players and for players who work closely with one or two other people to come up with nifty arrangements.

What is a chord substitution?

When you sub a chord, you are not modifying the melody of the tune. You are just using a different chord than the one people expect to hear.

Ok…then what’s the difference between a substitution and a wrong chord?

Sometimes the difference is simply taste. When I do a chord substitution, I look for another chord that contains the same melody note. We will be using Amazing Grace (in D) as our canvas for this. There is a pick-up note, but on beat 1, the melody plays a D (“a-MAAAYYYY-zing”).

When you hit that D, the underlying chord happens to be a D major chord (D-F#-A). Now, you could say, “I’m going to substitute that D major chord and play an A major instead.” That will not sound good because an A major chord (A-C#-E) does not consist of the note named “D”. If you want to substitute that chord, look for other chords that also contain a D. Not every chord that contains a D is going to sound good though. This is where you get to experiment.

So the chord just needs to contain your melody note. Is that the only rule to substituting chords?

Actually, you are not limited to only substituting chords that contain the melody note, or chords that are within the diatonic key in which you are playing. We will mainly be covering these types of chords just to get you started, but chord substitutions are limitless. You can substitute a minor chord for a diatonic major chord. You can play suspended chords. You can play 9ths. You can even play chords that are completely borrowed from other keys. It’s something you can work your way up to in the future.

Let’s go ahead and start by looking at Amazing Grace.

1 Chord Substitutions

Ex: Amazing Grace [Composer]

D G D D A # 3 & # 4 œ ˙ œ ˙ ˙. ˙ œ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ D G D D A D # [Title] # ˙ 9 œ ˙ œ ˙ [Composer] œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙ œ ˙. ˙. I chose Amazing Grace because it is a simple melody to work with and the actual tun only contains 3 chords: D, G, and A A A 7 F m D maj7 F min7 D (or A7). For simplicity, we’re going to work with substitutions# diatonic to this key. Below I have# picked out each note in the melody# 4 of Amazing Grace and given 6 possible underlying chords for each. You can begin by experimenting with sub- stitutions& # by4 looking at the melodyw note in the wtune, and picking out one of thew possible underlying chords. (Note:w These are not all the possible chords, wthey just fit withinw the key, andw on this page.) ww w w w w w w w w w D B m G D maj7 B min7 G maj7 # # w w w w w w 8 w w w w ww w w w w w w w Em E min7 C#dim C#dim7 A A 7 # w w # w w w w w w 15 w w ww w w w w D F#m F#min7 B min B min7 D maj7 # # w w w w w w 22 w w w ww w w w G Em G maj7 E min7 C#dim7 C#dim # w w w w # w w w ww w w w 29 w w w w w w A A 7 F#m D maj7 F#min7 D # # w w w w 36 w w w ww w w w w w w © w w w w 2 w

©