# Plural Substitute Chords



## Augminished (Mar 31, 2012)

Do any of you guys have any helpful tips for Plural Substitute's? I am talking specificly about II V I cadence's (minor and major) while having the IV as an optional possibility. 

The minor cadences keep throwing me off since they are some are derived from the melodic minor scale and others are not. 

Any help would be appreciated.


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## Trespass (Mar 31, 2012)

I haven't heard the term "Plural substitutes"... not sure what that refers to.

I think of it in terms of functional substitution (tritone subs, iis preceding any given V, V preceding any chord, V of V, Coltrane changes) and color subs (upper triads whatever, tension/resolution [i.e. anything over anything as long as it resolves])

It seems like perception, I've heard different people talking about substitions in totally different ways. I know there's Modal Interchange, which was once a Berklee thing appaerntly, but I didn't seem to grasp what was different about the way they approached subs.


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## Augminished (Mar 31, 2012)

Here is an example of what I am talking about:

iimin9 Plural sub is VImaj7
V7(or9) Plural Sub is VIImin7(b5)
Imaj9 Plural sub is iiimin7

The way I look at it is inverting the chord and then removing the root.

That is an example of major subs/cadence (obviously) but the minor subs is what is killing me. Some apparently operate out of the melodic minor while the iimin7(b5) operates out of the natural minor and V7 is taken from the major scale and the imin6 (or 69) is taken from the melodic minor scale. 

Thanks for the help!


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Apr 1, 2012)

I took a commercial harmony class a couple years back, and I ran into "plurality" briefly. The instructor copied and republished Dick Grove's harmony books, which mention plural chords and tones a few times. I'll make it known now that the books present very idiosyncratic material in a very idiosyncratic way. I don't recommend them at all, because they don't explain anything and are organized like a horse's patootie. There are some exercises that I like from them, but they're mostly based on rote learning. With that said, I file "plural substitution" under 'Terms That Make Your Life Unnecessarily Complicated'.



Augminished said:


> The way I look at it is inverting the chord and then removing the root.



I'm about to make this a lot easier. Here's how diatonic substitution works:







The first system is a D major scale harmonized in triads. Above are the lead sheet symbols, below is a Roman numeral analysis. Easy enough, right? The next system divides the diatonic chords into three groups: Tonic (I), Subdominant (IV), and Dominant (V). I, IV, and V are what we call primary triads, as they have extremely clear functions within the key. Substitutions typically replace a primary triad with a secondary triad that contains two of the same notes. In other words, a secondary triad is a chord whose root is a third above or below that of a primary triad. In those three measures, I've indicated the primary triad as well as each set of two secondary triads. You'll notice that I crossed out iii under the 'Dominant' heading; this is because dominant functions progress to tonic functions, and iii sounds too tonic to be dominant. (The Corelli cadence is an interesting example of iii used as a dominant function, although it's really more about voice leading than dominant-tonic resolution.)

We can abstract these relationships a little further.






This diagram shows the progression of functions to their resolution to tonic. With the numerals lined up like this, and with both major as well as minor systems, you can see a pattern: primary triads in major keys are all major, and the secondary triads are all either minor or diminished. We can therefore conclude that the entire purpose for using secondary triads is to inject a different color (minor/diminished) into an otherwise major progression. Likewise, in the minor mode, the primary triads are all minor (except for V, but that is because we are using harmonic minor in order to create a leading tone in the dominant chords), and the secondary triads are either major or diminished. Once again, the secondary triads provide a color contrast to the mode's principle sound (minor). The third row is marked as "Distant Substitutions". These chords are somewhat unfavorable - iii because it's kinda halfway between tonic and dominant (therefore a chord with a mixed identity and a weak function), and vi (as subdominant) because it is used, by far, as a tonic substitute (as in a vi ii V I progression), and therefore doesn't make as convincing of an approach to V (try vi V I, it's a bit weaker than vi ii V I).

You mentioned that your problem lies with interpreting the minor mode, so let's look at that. First, you need to get down with a couple of ideas. You probably know about natural minor, harmonic minor, and melodic minor. Three different scales, right? More like three different flavors of the same scale - the sixth and seventh scale degree are variable, depending on the situation. I wrote on this concept in this thread. If you harmonize a natural minor scale, you get i ii° III iv v VI VII. The purpose of the dominant degree, as I've said previously, is to progress to the tonic, so it needs to have a lot of tension before it releases. That is best accomplished when there is a half-step between the seventh degree of the scale (called a leading tone) and the tonic. This situation is artificially created in minor keys by raising the seventh degree, thereby transforming v into V and VII into vii°. We only apply this operation to get V and vii°, because they're dominant functions. If you applied this to every triad, you'd also end up with III+. We don't want an augmented III+ chord, though, so we leave it as it is without the harmonic minor. So, the chord scale for minor keys reads as a hybrid of natural and harmonic minor: i ii° III iv V VI vii°

Now that we've covered harmonic functions, let's have a deeper look at color. When you start adding tones to triads, such as extensions (7, 9, 11, 13) or additions (6, 6/9, 2, 4), it's generally accepted that chords with more space will sound more harmonious. Therefore, minor second and minor ninth dissonances are avoided between anything but the root and second/ninth. Sometimes, in order to accomplish this, we must artificially create this situation by altering some chord tones, like how we raised the leading tone to get the dominant functions in the minor mode. Here are some such examples in the key of D major. Alterations are indicated with [brackets].


```
D major scale: D E F# G A B C#

I - D&#8710;13(#11) - 1 3 5 7 9 [#11] 13, D F# A C# E [G#] B (11 sharpened to avoid m9 between 3 and 11)
ii - Em13 - 1 b3 5 b7 9 11 13, E G B D F# A C# (Notice: no G#)
iii - F#m11(b13,b9) - 1 b3 5 b7 b9 11 b13, F# A C# E G B D (b9 is okay, b13 is permissible because 5th is often omitted)
IV - G&#8710;13(#11) - 1 3 5 7 9 #11 13, G B D F# A C# E
V - A13(#11) - 1 3 5 7 9 [#11] 13, A C# E G B [D#] F# (11 sharpened to avoid m9 between 3 and 11)
vi - Bm11(b13) - 1 b3 5 b7 9 11 b13, B D F# A C# E G (b13 is okay because 5th is omitted)
vii° - C#ø11(b13,b9) - 1 b3 b5 b7 b9 11 b13, C# E G B D F# A (The only m2/m9 in this chord is between 1 and b9, and that's cool.)
```
So, you can see that alterations are made independent of the scale. When you deal with sixth chords, you invariably use a major instead of a minor sixth, because you must include the fifth of the chord to maintain the proper identity of the root. 1 b3 5 6 works, 1 b3 5 b6 does not because there is a m2 between 5 and b6.


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## Augminished (Apr 1, 2012)

Awesome thank you so much! That really cleared up all of my questions. That chart you put on here was brilliant. 

Agree with the "Terms that make your life unnecessary complicated". I understand using this in a songwriting format but anywhere else I am at a lose.

Edit: Also the book I am using is a Hal Leonard book.... Go figure


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## Trespass (Apr 1, 2012)

If you're playing in a jazz context, just replace the root in your voicing with the 9th. That will get you all the (extremely vanilla) substitutions you've listed above.

e.g. typical Drop 2 Am7 voicing: G C E A (x x 5 5 5 5). Just replace the A with the ninth, B, to get a nice rootless Drop 2 Am9 voicing: G C E B (x x 5 5 5 7). I can do this with all of the inversions of the first voicing to get a rootless voicing.

Alternatively, you might notice that a rootless Am9 ([A] C E G B) is actually just a C major 7. Learning the inversions to Drop 2 Cmaj7 will be the exact same group of voincings that can be played over an Am chord.


Relationships like this simplify learning all of these chords for the four main chord groups. Most jazz guys will not be using a ton of different voicings for each chord, they'll be using reliable grips enharmonically over different changes.


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