What this lesson will help you do:

1. Expand your melodic choices on dominant chords
2. Expand your substitution repertoire for dominant chords
3. Increase your fluidity playing on the most common 7th chord movements and resolutions
4. Help you get a lot more mileage out of your Dominant Voicings and Licks by giving you other root notes to play them from.
5. Help you simplify and impose more complex sounds whilst only having to think about moving more familiar dominant sounds and shapes

HOW TO PRACTICE:

• Practice improvising and connecting lines through these cycles with a metronome. You can use arpeggios or scales.
• Practice saying the different cycles from ever starting note. eg practice picking a random chord and then saying the cycle of 4ths all the way around from that chord, then say its tritone sub, then say cycle 3 and cycle 4.
• Comp through a tune using these cycles

NOTE: When using CYCLE 3 in a tune or vamp, the last note of the run is the target key. For Example, imposing Cycle 3 on a C7 chord means going Eb7,D7,Db7, C7. The lowest note of the 4 is the key.

Cycle 1 = Cycle of 4ths – this is the most common way dominants move/resolve, making it the most essential pattern to have mastered.

C F Bb Eb Ab Db Gb B E A D G C

Try Practicing this cycle al the way around from different starting points, and then try practicing it in 4 note groups to simulate a I-VI-II-V. EG Practice Eb Ab Db Gb, this is a I VI II V in Gb and will come up in a lot of tunes in many keys.

Cycle 2 = The Tritone cycle, each dominant chord can be substituted/ cycled with a dominant chord a tritone (3 tones) away. This is the most substitution you will see.

These cycles are more like pairings – A & Eb, Bb and E, B and F, C & Gb.

These are great for adding tension and resolution to dominant vamps or adding tension to resolving dominants.

EG playing over Dmin7 – G7 – Cmaj 7.

on the G7 chord you can substitute in Db7 – either as an arpeggio or scale (Mixolydian or lydian dominant) , you can even just substitute it in for the last 2 beats of the bar.

Cycle 3 = The Turnaround/ Tritone Run Down

This cycle takes the first 4 chords of cycle 1 and uses a tritone substitution on chords 2 and 4 to create smoother voice leading.

Cycle 1 starting on G = G C F Bb

Cycle 3 starting on G = G Gb* F E**

*Tritone sub for C

**Triton Sub for Bb

Cycle 4 = The diminished family

Dominant chords can also be substituted around a cycle of minor 3rds, which spells outs a diminished 7th arpeggio. This is a tricky bit of theory to understand but has been brought to the forefront of guitar pedagogy by Pat Martino.

Here’s Pat Martino Demonstrating how a diminished seven chord creates dominant chords by altering one note,

It’s this logical idea that every Dominant Chord contains three notes of a parent diminished chord that allows us to substitute these chords around a cycle.

If you’re lost, that’s fine, just check out the image below. It shows Cycle 2, and then Cycle 4. As you can see cycle 4 is pairings of cycle 2

When using this approach, you don’t have to go through the whole cycle, you can substitute any one chord from the cycle for any other chord of the cycle, its showing possibilities not necessities.