DOMINANT 7 PASSING CHORD #2

Photo by Efren Barahona on Unsplash

This is yet another  beautiful concept that is also relatively easy to understand. Perhaps you have heard about this concept but still don't know how to apply it in a chord progression or are you looking to explore more ways to use it in your progressions? If so, then you are in the right post😉, because we will learn  the basic meaning of this concepts,  The easy methods of formation and application. we will also see some practical examples along side illustrations.
   

 What is a Dominant 7th?

In order to really understand this concept of passing chord we need to really look at the concept of the "dominant 7th" chord itself. A dominant 7th chord(also known as a "Major-minor Seventh chord [Mm7] " and "V7") is basically a 7th chord that is built on the 5th degree of a major scale. Sounds a little bit complicated? well not really.. it can also be seen as major triad chord along side a minor 7th note that is, simply the combination of 1 3 5 and a flattened 7(♭7)notes(1 3 5 ♭7) So in a nut shell, a dominant 7th chord is simply formed by adding a ♭7 to a major triad chord. From a deeper theoretical point of view, It can also be said to be the combination of a Tonic(1 'doh') | Mediant(3 'mi') | Dominant(5'sol') | Flattened leading tone(♭7 'ta') |. We  learnt about those theoretical names of notes in the previous post so if you still feel lost or confused about that, You wanna make sure to visit/revisit the post, you can  Click here  to get there, and do ask questions in the comment section if you still don't understand it well enough😊.  A dominant 7th chord is specified/Identify in a piece or progression  by an added a superscript "7" or simply by adding a "7" in front of the Note's alphabet(C7 A7 D7 etc..) Now, lets take a look at some practical examples.
in key C-major, from the explanation above the Dominant 7th chord is a |C|E|G|B♭|... That is a C dominant 7 chord denoted as "C7" also in key G the dominant chord of G(G7)  is simply G(1)| B(3)| D(5)| F(♭7)|.  

 APPLICATION 

Now that we have understood the concept of  "Dominant 7th" chords (ask questions in the comments if you still don't get it)  lets move straight into some basic methods to use your Dominant 7 chords as passing or bridge chord. We will learn two really cool yet simple methods.;
 1 Resolving to A Perfect fourth
 2 Resolving to a Half-step.

 1 Resolving To A Perfect fourth

The dominant 7th chord always tends to resolve to a major chord a perfect fourth ahead i.e a C7  always tend to resolve to an F-Major(including major7 major9...) so this simply means a C7 can be used as passing to F major. So a Dominant 7 can always serve as a bridge from a I to a IV. For example if we have a 1-4(doh-fah) progression in KEY C{I=Cmaj7 IV=Fmaj7}.. we can easily input the C7 passing chord like this..  I= C E G B(CMAJ7)=> {V7=C E G B♭(C7) }=> IV=> F A C E

(Watch the video for clearer illustration)

chord 1

 passing chord

chord 4

We can see how we went from the CM7 to the C7  before reaching the destination chord(FM7).... Note; this method works for any major chord doesn't matter if its a triad chord or a maj7 or maj9.. its works for any kind of major chord. So anywhere you have to move to a '4' or 'fah' in a progression you can always just add your Dominant 7 chord in between them as a bridge to make your playing more engaging and  colorful.

2 Resolving to a Half-step
Another simply beautiful way you can use the Dominant 7th(V7) chord as a bridge chord  is to play it before playing the chord a half-step away. What i mean by that is simply play the dominant chord the of the note that is a half-step away from your destination chord. For example for simplicity's sake we'll use the key of C once again. so in Key C if my destination chord was C-major i'd play a D♭7(D♭Dominant 7th) before hitting that C-major. now let us see a more practical example.. using the same progression in the previous method(1-4) we would now put in that dominant-7th chord a half-step away rather than a perfect fourth. We'll then have a progression like this;-

 I= C E G B(CMAJ7)=> {V7=G♭ B♭ D♭ E (G♭7) }=> IV=> F A C E. 

why did we use a 'G♭7' as bridge there? simply because G♭7 is a half-step away from Fmaj7!(destination chord)..


(Watch the video for a more realistic  illustration)

chord 1

passing chord

chord 4

So from the illustrations, we can see how we moved from the first chord then to the dominant 7th chord a half-step away from the destination chord before we dropped to the destination chord. You can also call this a "Chromatic-Dominant 7th passing chord" because it uses a chromatic approach, if you don't understand that no worries we would learn about it soon. There are other theories to this like the Tritone substitution etc.. but in this article we are focusing on the dominant 7th passing in future articles we would learn all of those so don't be surprised to see this passing chord again on another topic😊
                  

I hope this article has been of help to you on your journey to advancement..🙂 as always feel free to drop your thoughts, ask your questions or put up your suggestion in the comments. Good  luck to you as you explore and musically advance.👍

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