Is The Neapolitan Chord A Tritone Substitution? (Nope) [Q&A]

Tommaso Zillio

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I got a very interesting question lately on my YouTube channel:

“Is the Neapolitan chord a tritone substitution?”

What would be your answer right now, {subtag:name|part:first|ucfirst}?

Well, I’m going to spoil it immediately… a Neapolitan chord is not a tritone substitution…

… but it is very, very close to being one.

And the difference between these two things unlocks sounds that (I’m willing to bet) you did not think of using before.

BTW, don’t worry if you don’t know what a tritone sub or a Neapolitan chord is… of course I’m going to explain it :-)

In this video we also answer:

• Why do you not use lower case for minor chords?
• What is the definition of variation?
• Why we ignore the diminished chord?
• Is the Neapolitan chord borrowed from Phrygian?

I’m going to put two more videos on this page to help you if you want to go deeper.

The first one is about the infamous tritone interval, and the tritone substitution:

and the second one is about the Neapolitan chord. If you want to learn how to use it in practice, this is the video for you:

And if you want to finally master completely how to use all these chords and substitutions and ideas on your guitar… without going crazy by doing mathematical calculations while you play… then you want to have a look at the Complete Chord Mastery guitar course