Favorite Tritone

[oyasumi]

Everyone has one, right?

[Karl Henning]

Had to go with D - G#

[ibanezmonster]

It was a hard choice between C-F# and F-B. They sound so incredibly different, yet... the same. Mysterious.

[Karl Henning]

I like it even better spelled C - G^b, though. (Just saying.)

[ibanezmonster]

I like it best spelled, ummm...

Asss Ebbbbbbbbbb 

or maybe not.

[madaboutmahler]

A - D# for me. Mysterious with perhaps a hint of subtle optimism? One that I use much it seems!

[listener]

a Sibelius 4^th?

[AdamFromWashington]

C - F# is the first Tritone I ever learned, and will always hold a special place in my heart. 

[nochmal]

What Adam said, even if that was only HIS GUESS geddit? geddit??

[Fagotterdämmerung]

  A most beloved interval. If at first you don't succeed...

  It's got to be F and B. Their existence in a white-note C Major scale reminds even the most placid harmonists no place is safe.

[not edward]

G-C# for the first bars of Nuages Gris.

[Brian]

Once outside San Antonio I heard a mariachi band where the bass player insisted on playing tritones the entire time. Mariachi bass typically follows the one-two one-two beat of the music with a very simple series of chords. But every progression this dude playing was a tritone. Nonstop tritones. It fascinated me. I stood rapt for probably 20 minutes listening to this guy anchor literally every single song with bass tritones. I have never forgotten it. Every month or so, and certainly every time I hear mariachi or simple one-two folk music, in the back of my head someone starts playing bass...and every progression is a tritone...

[jochanaan]

G-Db--the one in Mars from Holst's The Planets.

[Karl Henning]

Sweet!

[Fagotterdämmerung]

Once outside San Antonio I heard a mariachi band where the bass player insisted on playing tritones the entire time. Mariachi bass typically follows the one-two one-two beat of the music with a very simple series of chords. But every progression this dude playing was a tritone. Nonstop tritones. It fascinated me. I stood rapt for probably 20 minutes listening to this guy anchor literally every single song with bass tritones. I have never forgotten it. Every month or so, and certainly every time I hear mariachi or simple one-two folk music, in the back of my head someone starts playing bass...and every progression is a tritone...

That is bizarre. Was the progression just back and forth between two chords at a tritone distant ( e.g. C Major to F# Major ) or was it like a progression through diminished fifths ( e.g. G-dim, C-cim, F-dim, etc. )?

[Cato]

Once outside San Antonio I heard a mariachi band where the bass player insisted on playing tritones the entire time. Mariachi bass typically follows the one-two one-two beat of the music with a very simple series of chords. But every progression this dude playing was a tritone. Nonstop tritones. It fascinated me. I stood rapt for probably 20 minutes listening to this guy anchor literally every single song with bass tritones. I have never forgotten it. Every month or so, and certainly every time I hear mariachi or simple one-two folk music, in the back of my head someone starts playing bass...and every progression is a tritone...

Did he possibly think he was playing fifths?

That is bizarre. Was the progression just back and forth between two chords at a tritone distant ( e.g. C Major to F# Major ) or was it like a progression through diminished fifths ( e.g. G-dim, C-cim, F-dim, etc. )?

This man might be a Mariachi Charles Ives!   

[Luke]

Well, C-F# is hallowed because of Petrouchka and the War Requiem amongst others, but then D-G# is the spectacular hinge around which the first movement of Alkan's Concerto for solo piano hangs. And then F-B is so pivotal in Berg (think Wozzeck, think, especially, of the Lyric Suite, of which it is the cryptographically-hidden core, Hannah Fuchs-Robetin, where H=B)... How to choose.

C-F#, because it's the one used in abstracted music examples, too, e.g to illustrate Messiaen's chord of the added augmented fourth, with its resolution, in the Technique de mon langage musical. I'm always a sucker for music examples...! 

[Brian]

That is bizarre. Was the progression just back and forth between two chords at a tritone distant ( e.g. C Major to F# Major ) or was it like a progression through diminished fifths ( e.g. G-dim, C-cim, F-dim, etc. )?

Mariachi bass is a 1-2, 1-2, 2-1, 2-1 simple progression. So for example, it might typically be G, C, G, C, C, G, C, G, [repeat]. But in this case, yes, it would G, C#, G, C#, C, F#, C, F# [repeat]!

Did he possibly think he was playing fifths?

See above, he would actually play two tritones based around the "correct" chords! I think he was a rogue mariachi genius!

[jochanaan]

Did he possibly think he was playing fifths?

Maybe he was drinking them.

[EigenUser]

For me, it's a tie between Eb-A and D-G#. Reason? The 'out-of-tune' violin at the start of the 3rd movement of Bartok's Contrasts.