dominant chord family of colors

Dominant harmony, grande topic, perhaps the most theoretically complicated of the musical elements in this text. Really? Why? Well, as the name potentially implies, i.e., to dominate, the dominant chord plays a rather important role in most of the styles of American music. And considering the myriad of different musical settings which we need the dominant colors to create a reasonable historically authentic sound stylistically, i.e., as the music was written or originally played, no wonder that the dominant family of colors, as created from within the equal tempered system of tuning, has sooooo many wonderful relatives, each contributing an essential aspect of one or more styles! So very cool. Is there a style of American music in the which the dominant colors are oftentimes conspicuously absent? You bet, we have it all. Oftentimes the music of the "new age" jazz genre, with it's "free floating" sense of tonal gravity and exciting often "chant like" grooves for extended blowing, purposefully omits the dominant color, i.e., the tritone tension from within the harmony, creating it's sense of tension and release through more musically meditative techniques. So...

Does a tonality without a tritone create the music of a new age global consciousness?

Historical importance of the dominant family in American music? Well first and perhaps foremost, the dominant sounds are the basis for American blues harmony, the sounds of which find their way into all of the American musical genres. Are the blue sounds part of the original core of the American story? For many of our most celebrated American musical heroes, a resounding YES!

Theoretical importance of the Dominants? That the dominant family of chords are a key player in the creating of musical tension and it's release, thus they play a pivotal role in most of the cadencing and modulation within all of the American styles, thus we often find the dominant tension within almost every popular chord progression used to tell our stories.

Is part of the excitement and challenge of bebop jazz created from the coupling of rapid tempos and an equally rapid changing of key centers? I think so. Is a sure way to change tonal centers within equal temper achieved by simply sounding the dominant chord of the key we wish to go too? Maybe. Cool with these ideas?

Dominant chord theory. Well enough musing eh ( ? ) and back to the theory yes? Due to the encapsulated tritone dissonance of the dominant seventh chord, this family of chords is generally of a unstable tonal nature. While usually preceded by some type of relative stability, the sounding of the dominant color creates a "need" and a potential wanting to return to a more stable or restive place. Often called tonal gravity within this text, this "need to resolve" as created by the dominant colors potentially creates a sense of emotional expectation, a key ingredient on the creative musicians palette.

It's upon the shoulders of the dominant seventh family that much of the dissonance, thus harmonic tension, in American music is found. Alterations of the component parts of dominant seventh chords are as varied as the styles of American music. Of the three families of chord types, the color tones of the dominant seventh chords are the most widely altered and substituted for, potentially becoming a inexhaustible resource with tension creating ability. Created from the fifth scale degree of the major scale, let's locate the dominant seventh chord in the following chart. Example 1.

The essential part of dominant harmony that structurally provides the quality of sound associated with the this family are the third and seventh degree. Let's spell out a G 7 chord, i.e., the dominant chord in the key of C major. What is the interval created between the major third and the dominant seventh? Right, the tritone. Example 1a.

The third degree B is a major third above the root G. The seventh of our chord F, is a minor or blue seventh above our root, G. Find and create this popular G 7 chord sequence on your instrument and begin to get a feel for its tension and cool and unique sonority. Here is the dominant seventh chord placed in the common One / Four / Five chord progression found in various styles of American music. The One and Four chords are tonic chord types, the Five is the dominant chord type. Example 1b.

Can you sense that the chord in bar 3 wants to resolve to the sound in bar 4?. If not, try again. If so, welcome to world of tonal gravity. Musical artists are simply people like us who balance and control this tension and its release. This One, Four, Five sequence of chords is very popular with just about everyone stylistically. The tonic chords in example 1b above just might be the granddaddy chord progression of them all. So what is it about the dominant chord that creates the tension? Well, lets find out shall we?

The two key structural components of all of the three chord families are their third and seventh degrees. In the dominant family, the interval created between the third and the seventh is the all important tritone, among the most dissonant of our diatonic intervals. Artistically, we want to create tension and release it. This tension and release is tonally achieved primarily by use of dominant seventh sounding chords ( V 7 ) and their resolution to tonic sounding chords. The tension inherent in dominant seventh chords is basically centered around this tritone interval created between the third and the seventh of the chord. Thus in the key of C major, the tritone interval is created between the B natural and F natural. One consonant resolution of this tritone interval in the key of C major could be that the B resolves to the tonic C while the F resolves to major third E. Example 2.

Pretty vanilla huh? Pleeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaassssssssssseeeeeeee, play this tritone resolution on your instrument, if possible, or at the piano. Depending on your artistic directions, this tonal concept and the resulting sounds are potentially very important. Here is the tritone interval working its magic in creating the harmony in the blues world. Example 3.

Hear the tritone quality in the chords above? Are the dominant chords considered the tonic chords in the blues? Exactly. Lest we forget that in performance, American blues is oftentimes a combination of "in tune chords" with variably tuned melody pitches, i.e., honks, moans, squeals, shakes, vibratos, bends, rattles and rolls! This last line ends with the pitches of a minor triad in the melody, aren't the chords in the idea based on the major triad, i.e., a major 3rd? A blues controversy? Can we add other color tones to the dominant chord in the blues styling? Of course we can, we do it all here yes?

Folk music. Although we do occasionally find the dominant chord as the tonic of a folk song, such as "Old Joe Clark", in the various styles and sub genres of folk music the dominant chord is mostly used within a cadential motion towards the tonic. In the following selection we find the dominant chord within an American classic gospel folk song. Example 4.

Nice line huh? Feel the dominant color setting up the next phrase? Can you sing the rest of the line? Find it on your ax? So in folk music the dominant 7th chord is pretty vanilla? Pretty much, rarely do the folk players extend the dominant chord past the 7th degree. Why? Well, mainly it's tradition. Folk music is generally played by "folks" on a standard tuned 6 string guitar. With the majority of the chords being the open chords in the first few positions on the instrument.

Blues artists base their sound in the dominant color, as it assumes the role of the tonic. Tritone instability and all? Yep, is that part of what makes it the blues? Could be. And although the V 7 chord is by far the most common, blues players oftentimes extend up into the arpeggio to include the 9th of the chord. Really? So, we can we expand and create other colors of the dominant seventh type ( V 7 ) chords by moving into the upper structure of the arpeggio? Exactly. In the following chart we simply think of G as the root and spell the chord diatonically using the pitches of the C major scale. Example 5.

Here the music simply moves back and forth between One and Four with a blues based feel using the dominant 9th color. Example 5a.

Is the dominant 9th the ultimate "funk" chord in the universe, the global vamp and groove of hipsters everywhere? Could very well be.

The rockers tend to follow the blues guys in regards to their dominant chords although in many of the newer rock styles of the last 10 years or so, the V 7 chord is oftentimes simplified to include just the root and 5th of the chords. This voicing principle is often applied to a lot the chords in a tune, the chords moved about in parallel motion. Adding in the Three chord to the above idea creates the jamm groove for the rock anthem "Freebird." Due to my programming limitations, you'll have to imagine the classic rock sound as created by the Les Paul / Marshall matchup, both on 10, for this next idea. Example 6.

Do the 5th's sound a bit primitive? I think that's the idea. I'm not really a rocker by trade, although I dig the music, any comments as to why the rock harmony evolved from the fuller sounding bar chords of the 60's and 70's into the 5th's? Is it the modern gear, the overdrives / distortions so favored by the younger players today that in a sense necessitates the need to simplify the harmony? Does the simpler overtone series created by using just the root and fifth as in the above idea give the distortion a better chance to work it's magic?

Jazz players tend to be the most adventurous of the creative musicians when coloring their dominant chords. Any color tone extension, either diatonic or altered often find a home within the jazz language. Here is a "jazzed up" realization of the Freebird harmonic motion shown above. 1 / b3 / b6 / b2 cadential motion. Hip to the #'s? Example 7.

Coolness emerges n'est pas? Is the jazz vocabulary the most complex of the American musical dialects? Could be. Is the advanced jazz artist of today mainly dealing with a chromatic palette of colors? Yes pretty much. Even simply mixing together the 7 pitches of the major scale with the other 5 pitches, i.e., the blue notes, combines to create the magic number of 12 pitches arranged sequentially as the chromatic scale. How many eggs in a dozen? Can any chord, scale, or arpeggio come from the chromatic scale?

Here is the chart from above spelling out the pitches of the dominant color built on the root G, the 5th degree of the C major scale. The new addition to the chart here is the other 5 pitches. Example 7a.

So, any combination of pitches creates a jazz chord? How so? Well thanks to all of the cool players before us, the dominant color within the jazz language has been expanded from it's mainly V 7 Ragtime / Dixieland origins, through the b5 / b9 of the bepop era, into the # 11 polytonal direction initiated in the late 50's early 60's which continues on today. It's all about the recreation of a style? Yep. Do the dominant 7th / # 11 colors create Dixieland jazz? No, not really. Does a vanilla V 7 chord sound out of place in a polytonal piece? Yep, at least to my ears it does. So, as a player moves through the color tones, when one is exhausted over time we simply move onto the next, oftentimes retaining our own cliche ideas as originally created at that level within the arpeggio, and using them whenever we choose too? Cool with this process? it's a common denominator for all the art forms, players oftentimes simply call it "searching." Of course this process of "exhausting" a color oftentimes takes month's or years of shedding. Needless to say when the new colors evolve, there is a new ton of joy in the souls of the searchers!

Thinking of the harmony built on the 5th degree, here are a few of the more common dominant colors generally associated with the Five chord. Placed in a resolving motion towards various tonics, we perhaps begin to illuminate the immense variability of the dominant family of chordal colors. Can anything go anywhere? Or does everything go everywhere? So very cool. Example 7b.

Can we remix and rematch any of the above colors? Pretty much. Here are a few of the popular configurations available to the creative artist. Example 7c.

The following shapes are headed in the polytonal direction, almost like chords on top of chords? Well ... Here we'll use letter names to simplify identification. Example 8.

The dominant ninth chord is the ultimate funk and blues chord. The polytonal chords are a bit modern and less tonally directed. The altered chords are bopish in the major tonality and their darker colors work very well in the minor tonality. All a matter of knowing the resource and exploring, coming up with something new and cool and experimenting with it in existing tunes, forms, formats etc. Here are some additional concepts involving chord type and dominant harmony. 

Review: Of the three different chord types, the dominant chord is the most manipulated. The number of different non diatonic alterations is limited only by our own imaginations. Again, the key element which initially creates the dominant colors is the tritone hue. With this tritone interval somewhere within the chord structure, really anything goes in regards to creating different voicings, inversions, modulation, tonal direction etc.

Each of us must work for our own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity. Marie Curie