Community Challenge 11 | Write something with a secondary dominant (Patreon)

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Hi Everyone,

Welcome to the community challenge. Every week I've been offering a writing prompt. This week it is:

Write something with a secondary dominant in the chord progression

If you need a refresher (or just a first-time-fresher), check out my Music Theory Monday lesson about Dominant Chords. If you're new around here, that lesson might not make a lot of sense without being familiar with Music Theory for Guitar first, and then getting into Music Theory Monday. You can find the ideal order to watch all my lessons here. 

If you need a mini refresher, here goes:

Basically, when you picture the order of chords in a key, you picture this:

Key of G Major

I    -  G
ii   - Am
iii  - Bm
IV - C
V  - D
vi  - Em
vii° - F#°

In the key of G Major, the D Major Chord is the dominant chord. You can think of "dominant chord" and "V chord" as the same thing. D7 would be the dominant 7th chord, which basically means it sounds real nice when it resolves to G. (watch the lesson)

Secondary Dominants are chords that already exist in the key, but are altered to become dominant 7th chords. When they are altered, they use notes outside the key, but they resolve to chords that are in the key so they sound like they belong even though they are out.

I usually think of the secondary dominant chords as V of V (also written V/V) and V of vi (V/vi).

For example:

Am is the ii chord in the key of G. If we make the 7th chord version that fits diatonically (aka fits in the key) we get:

A C E G - - Am7

If we just sharp the C to become C#, we get:

A C# E G - - A7

This is called V of V when you find it in the Key of G Major. Grab your guitar and try this progression:

G, Em,  C,   D

G, Em, A7, D

That A7 doesn't fit in the key, but because it resolves to D, it feels ok! Often, you'll find a secondary dominant nestled into a progression where the altered note can contrast against the unaltered version, like above when you played C the first time through and then A7 the second time around. This is important to note because a progression consisting of G, A7, and D would just sound like it was in the key D, where D = I, G = IV and A7 = V.

Another secondary dominant would be V of vi, which in the key of G would be turning the iii chord, Bm, into B7. It's called the V of vi because B7 is the V of E, and Em is the vi chord in the key of G.

An example progression could be: G B7 Em D7 (I, V/vi, vi, V)

Its important to note: in both examples, the V of __ always resolves to whatever it is the V of. For example, V of V resolved to V (A7 resolved to D) and V of vi resolved to vi (B7 to Em). This is a great place to start using secondary dominants, but they don't always HAVE to resolve like this. For example, V of vi often resolves to IV very nicely.

These two secondary dominants are the most common but there are others discusses in the video I mentioned above.

Post your community challenge experiments and explorations to the community forum.

Here are some ideas:

1. Write some simple chord progressions that include V of V and/or V of vi.
2. Write a progression with a melody using V/V or V/vi
3. Write a whole song and experiment with more secondary dominants, like V/VI or V/ii

Have fun and explore. Half written and "am I doing this right?" submissions are absolutely ok because this place is all about learning. Have fun!