Yin & Yang - Tension & Resolution, Part 1 August 1st, 1995 - Guitar World by Trey Anastasio Guitar World is proud to welcome our new columnist, Phish's Trey Anastasio. Trey can be heard on Phish's new release, A Live One (Elektra). ANY MUSICIAN, REGARDLESS of the style of music he or she plays, can benefit greatly from a deeper understanding of _harmonic tension and resolution_. Over the next few months, I hope to shed some valuable light on this subject. First and foremost, keep in mind that the principles of Western harmony apply to all Western musical styles - from Bach to Pantera, the building blocks are the same. This is why it's important to distinguish between _style_ and _content_. For example, stylistically, Jimi Hendrix and Wynton Marsalis are polar opposites, but the musical roots of both may be traced to early black American blues and gospel. Their styles are very different, but their influences are similar. I can't stress one point enough: _Don't let style scare you away content_. You may not like a musician's style, but the content of his music might mave something you can apply to your own style. I generally don't like pop country music, but that wouldn't keep me from taking one of those patented three-part country vocal harmonies and putting it over a demented heavy metal vamp. With that horrible thought in mind, let's talk about content. In my opinion, the whole basis of Western music, regardless of style, revolves around the V ("five") chord resolving to the I ("one") chord. In musical terms, this is called _tension and resolution_, or, put simply, movement and rest. My personal definition of tension and resolution is that at any given time, you're either playing _on_ a chord or _to_ a chord. You're either in "tensionland" or "releaseland." That said, I'd like to discuss what I believe to be one of the most important harmonic concepts in music - the _tritone pronciple_ - which can be applied to any style you're playing, be it rock, jazz, country or blues. Here's the tritone principle in a nutshell: the third and the lowered seventh of a major scale (the tones that define the dominant-seventh chord sound) form an interval of a flatted fifth, also called the _tritone_. Since the notes in a tritone are equidistant (at equal intervals from each other), they can function as the third and the lowered seventh in two different keys, also a flatted fifth apart. Let's look at the G7 shape in Figure 1. Notice that, in addition to the root, all it contains is the third (B) and the lowered seventh (F). If you flip the function of these notes - that is, make the lowered seventh the third, and the third the lowered seventh - you'll get a dominant-seventh chord, the root of which is a tritone away from G, in this case Db. With Db as the root, the B (or Cb) functions as the lowered seventh, while the F functions as the third (see Figure 1A). So, in essence, one chord shape has two dominant-seventh functions. Now let's take this principle a step further. We know that a dominant- seventh chord functioning as the V wants to resolve to the I chord (or root). The same goes for a tritone. Check out Figure 2 - if you move the B note up a half-step to C and F down a half-step to E, you'll get the root and third of a C chord. By simply moving two notes, you produce a complete G7-C cadence. And _that_ is the V-I resolution. And remember, since a tritone also functions as a dominant-seventh chord a flatted fifth away, you can lower the B note a half-step to A# (Bb) and raise the F a half-step to Gb (F#) to create Db7-Gb resolution, as in Figure 2A. By adding "color" and "tension" tones to the basic tritone, you can instantly create sophisticated-sounding dominant-seventh chords... without needing to memorize thousands of chord shapes from a book! Figures 3-3C depict some common dominant voicings that resolve to the I chord. After learning these, try to figure out some cool V-I cadences of your own. See ya next month!