Songwriter’s Tip: The Tritone
Writing a song that requires that dissonant, haunting feel? Best popularized by songs such as Black Sabbath’s Black Sabbath, the intro to Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze and even the Dilbert TV show’s theme song, this interval is often condemned to stay forever in the genre of metal.
With a little experimentation, though, it can be used to create a haunting sound in any genre. Of course, classical musicians were using the interval in their compositions hundreds of years before metal’s arrival, and it can be applied to any song that calls for it.
The tritone is a musical interval that spans three whole tones and is also known as the augmented fourth or diminished fifth. For instance, the augmented fourth between C and F# forms a tritone.
Now I know you rockers probably don’t care about the theoretical implications (to be honest, neither do I, but don’t tell that to the people who hired me!) so I’ll give you the rough and dirty guitar tab that demonstrates the interval:
A—2–1–
E-0——-
And an example from Black Sabbath’s Black Sabbath to put it into context:
G——————
D–0—5———–
A———–4——-
E–3—————-
Now get that tritone to use in your own songs about haunted houses!
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