Secondary Dominants

[phantom]

thanks zatz! hm... interessting..

so you mean, you could play a dominant a whole step done from G (or whatever V there is) by pretending a G7 could be a G7/9/b13 and F7 would be a sub for it?

have to "brain" here a bit.. hm..*thinking hard*

EDIT: hey you have in melodic minor on the IV and V step dominant chords. so your example could be like borrowed from there also?!

[Zatz]

Originally Posted by phantom

hey you have in melodic minor on the IV and V step dominant chords. so your example could be like borrowed from there also?!

Nice conlusion! Hehe Scratching my head here too after what I've written.

Seems like that... But it must be the case only with these extensions of the V - 7/9/b13, I guess. Subdominant substituting for dominant sounds a bit crazy to me but that's how it looks on paper At least they have the same quality in melodic minor which presumably makes it possible to try this in a real life.

We should stop here or we'll disrupt the integrity of music theory

[phantom]

i just thought the differece is that it is a nonfunctioning dominant chord substitution. virtualy it seems right what you say, but practically i don' see a resolution happen as the substitution is too far away from resolving nicely to the I chord.

maybe a theory god can come down and clear that stuff up before i go insane...

[Zatz]

Originally Posted by phantom

...practically i don' see a resolution happen as the substitution is too far away from resolving nicely to the I chord.

I absolutely agree with you. I think this crazy substitution may only be good for changing the harmonic direction cos it leads you away from tonic and raises you up to the theory gods...

[phantom]

the longer we post, the more ideas i got.

it fits in the circle of fifth well. G7 - C 7 - F7. like a 2nd degree dominant chord (whatever that is..). it does not make it more useful, but mabe gives it one more right to exist. . hmmm..

[Zatz]

Some more ideas

As we've arrived at bluesy-looking progression I thought it would be fun to gather all the notes from 3 tritone intervals in C7, F7, G7 chords into 1 scale:

1) E-Bb 2) A-Eb 3) B-F ->>> Eb, E, F, A, Bb, B

If we throw in the root we'll get the following scale:

C, D#, E, F, A, Bb, B

It would be cool to try to improvise with it

Esus4 & Bbsus4 chord a tritone away from each other are intriguing too and could be a background for such an improvisation. Chromatic runs over light chords plus 4# jumps within the progression... I'll give it a try

[phantom]

great thoughts zatz...

i'll give it a try as well!

looks like it will sound very fusionish... can you record at home? i wonder what we come up with...

[Zatz]

It's our joint ramblings Was it all about secondary dominants?

Actually I don't have an appropriate equipment for recording my acoustic so if I succeed to come up with something decent I'll post a ptb. It would be great to hear your version too

[phantom]

alright!

i am teaching this afternoon... i will force my students to play Esus4 | Bbsus4 and i try out the "zatz scale" .

if i come back from teaching alive, i might try to record something tonight and put it up in this thread if nobody cares.

or should we open a new one called dominant substitution ramblings?

[Zatz]

LOL

It's cruel to test it on students!
Let the thread flow and we'll see where it takes us...

Good luck with teaching

[Malcolm]

Chris --- Just read your article; thank you!

[ChrisJ]

Hope it helped out.
-CJ

[VidKid]

Man, you two are getting too crazy for me!!! You got my brain a spinin'. This theory stuff is NOT ROCKET SCIENCE. LOL

If you're in key of C, and if I follow you correctly, if you play an G11 chord, it's sometimes written as F/G, which has a direct connection to the F chord and is a whole step down from the V7. The F note is the b7, the A note is the 9th, and the C is the 4th or 11th of a G11 chord. All you need is a G bass note to establish it as being a V7 chord. If you think about it, how many times have you played the rock prog G F G F G F ... It's the probably the first rock prog you played besides Stairway or Smoke On the Water. The F chord is really a hidden G11 chord or just an extention of the the first chord G. Now we play G5 power chords or open string chords and lose insight as sometimes being an implied G7 chord.

On that wierd scale you guys concocted, LOL, if you change A to Ab you almost have a Super Locrian scale (Abmel) in the key of C, with a chromatic passage from the 6th to the 5th, which works over V7alt. The C note would be a target root tone and not part of the SL scale. Does this make any sense to anybody? LOL

VidKid

[phantom]

thanks vidkid!!!

and i thought nothing could make your mind spin!!

The F note is the b7, the A note is the 9th, and the C is the 4th or 11th of a G11 chord. All you need is a G bass note to establish it as being a V7 chord

i kind of understand what you you are saying there. but i am missing a third somehow to make it a valid and functioning V7 chord. or did i loose it somewhere? like it is it looks more like a 7sus chord to me...... but then again, what do i know of rocket science.


after i came home from teaching yesterday night, i recorded a nice Esus4 | Bbsus4 backing track for the "zatz scale". the backings sound great without my playing over it, but as soon as i kick in it turns into dogsh*t. that has several reasons:
1. i still have a hard time to improvise over key changes.
2. i couldn't remind the "zatz scale" properly and played the "crap scale".
3. i ended up playing sus4 arpeggios to get eardrumpain relief. that sounded nice but wasn't what we wanted.

so i deleted the leads and went to bet very frustrated with the strong believe that i suck like paris hilton.


i am going to try again this afternoon with the proper scale.
if anyone has ideas what else could fit over it, i will try it out and post it tomorrow. if i can't come up with anything worth recording, i'll post the backing tracks for everybodies enjoyment, and sell my guitar.


EDIT: i found that over the Esus chord a Dmajor pentatonic is good to play and over the Bbsus the Abmajor pent.
in both cases you get the 1 - 2 - 4 - 5 - b7.

[VidKid]

Phantom,

Well, I think you figured out the tritone sub. Sounds like it anyway from your posts. It's good that you get these ideas. Your destiny surely lies in the future for inventing a new mode, scale or something - The Phantom Diatom Wantom modem scale. It'll keep us all on our toes.

Most difficult chord progressions can be reduced back to a simple structure. That's what I really meant by all of this theory stuff not being Rocket Science.

I think in most 11th chords, you can safely eliminate the 3rd when the 4th/11th is present. As you know, most sus chords resolve downward to the 3rd anyway, but not always. Try playing Fm/G and resolve to a C chord. The Ab is the b9 and works well. It's really a iv Borrowed chord and is another sub for a V7alt.

In the Key of G, the F chord ( bVII) is also a Borrowed sub for a V7 chord.

VK