Tritone Substitution: The substitution of a major-minor 7th chord whose root is a tritone away from the dominant for the dominant 7th chord.
Girl from Ipanema (1962) by Antonio Jobim (1927-1994)
The Girl from Ipanema is a jazz standard in bossa nova style written by Antonio Jobim. Portugese lyrics were written by Vinícius de Moraes and English lyrics were written later by Norman Gimbel.
The song was originally called The Girl Who Passes By and was to be in a musical. There was an actual girl from Ipanema, Heloísa Eneida Menezes Paes Pinto, who walked past a bar on her way home each day and became the inspriation for this song. A full version of the history of the song can be found here.
A version of the song featuring Astrud Gilberto and Stan Getz can be heard below:
A version of the chords for this piece is shown below:
Analysis
For our analysis, we will use a slightly simplified version of the chords as shown below. The chords that are shaded are the ones that we will concentrate on.
This version of the piece is in the key of F major. The following version shows all the chords that we can analyze easily in the key of F. While not diatonic to the key of F, the G7 chord can be analyzed as a II7 chord as it is acting as a pre-dominant chord in the progression.
A copy of the piece with all chords analyzed thus far is shown below:
This version just leaves the Gb7 chord in mm. 6, 8 and 14 to be analyzed.
This Gb7 chord is another example of a tritone substitution.
The chord is a major-minor 7th chord.
The chord is between a ii7 (pre-dominant) and and I (tonic), acting as a dominant chord. The dominant in the key of F is C7.
The root of th Gb7 chord is a tritone away from the true dominant in the key: the C7.
The two chords are shown below, noting the elements of the tritone substitution.
The final, complete analysis of The Girl from Ipanema with all chords analyzed is shown below:
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