COOK BOOK:

EXPLORING THE DOMINANTS

We know form working through the first harmonic functions page that every key has 8 dominant chords

Let's work in the green hypercube

The key of F has C major as its regular dominant (chord V)

And then all the other 7 orange chords are also dominant to F

Let's explore them all

But before we start,

One thing I love about metaharmony

is that it doesnt tell you what kind of chord you need to play

Dominant chords (whether the tritone sub or the backdoor) traditionally have the b7th added

But in metaharmony they could have a major 7th instead for example

An orange with a blue

These orange chords are dominant to F major simply because they're orange (scroll up to chart)

we can add any other notes on top of that if we please, whether the b7 or the ^7 or beyond

we no longer have certain chord extensions bound to certain functions

the colours give freedom

Let's hear this in action:

Starting with the major dominants (we'll skip the regular dom, C maj)

First one,

The backdoor dominant

Here's a I-IV-vi-V progression in F

The second time round we swap the V with the backdoor dominant, Eb^7

F^7 Bb^7 Dm7 C

F^7 Bb^7 Dm7 Eb^7

The ^7 backdoor dominant is so beautiful and Summery

This ^7 backdoor dominant could also be seen through the lens of modal mixture

Advanced colour page coming soon

The tritone sub

I'm sticking with the ^7 vibe for this one

We've got a vamp between the Tonic and the tritone dominant

and then a mini B section using some diatonic chords, resolving back via Gb^7

To me this movement is beautiful in a haunting, apocolyptic way

As if we're somewhere mysterious and dangerous but beautiful

The dominant of minor

I love this resolution, so underused

We're just vamping between chord I and the major III

F^7 Aadd11

We've got A major add 11 which is just so bright and beautiful

I love these!

They're not generally thought of as 'dominant'

They're very underused (especially the minor backdoor and tritone)

Let's hear some ideas I came up with using them:

The minor 5

Here we're just playing between chord I, F^7 and the minor v, Cm

I love the slight darkness this chord has

It makes the tonic major sound just that little bit more bright and delightful in contrast

The first recording is just the chords, the next is a riff

I made this riff in 5/8 time signature going between F^7 and Cm11

Chord iii

A controversial one!

Some say that chord iii has tonic function

But I disagree for two reasons

firstly its orange here

and the green hypercube says orange chords are dominant to F major

secondly it has the leading tone of F major in it (E natural)

Which pulls back up to F

Let's first hear the cadence of iii resolving to I:

to my ear, that is undeniably a dominant cadence of some sort

Now let's hear it in a progression:

This progression goes F^7, Am7, F^7, Gm7, Am7, F^7

I love using this iii I cadence to change into new keys, stay tuned for some Cook Book on that

The minor backdoor

love this one

Let's first hear it in a progression

We're going: F^7, Ebm7, Dm7, Bb^7

This riff goes between chord I, and Ebm9

Love how strongly the F^7 feels like tonic

The minor tritone sub

This is a beautiful one

Let's first hear it in a progression:

F^7, Gbm7, F^7, Gm7, with a little diatonic B section

I love the movement from F^7 up to Gbm7

And then in a riff:

In this riff I'm trying to obscure the 'semitone above' feeling of the chord by heavily accenting the 3rd in the bass

and then we go to chord IV Bb major and use Gbm7 to get back to F

I wrote another chord progression again trying to obscure the 'semitone above the root' feeling

F^7 Bb^7 Gbm7 Gm9

You could say this is just a chromatic approach of chord ii

but I think it really holds its own harmonic space, identity and function in the progression

TABS/NOTATION COMING SOON

So that's me sharing a little exploration of each of the 8 dominants

Theres still so much more to do with each of them

and so many ways to express with them

But what about all the subdominants?

Let's explore them in a different way: