64. Secondary Dominant ⑦ In Practice 3 "Not Resolving on Purpose ②"

Author: sleepfreaks

Going Deeper into Progression that Don’t Resolve

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Previously we looked at how the secondary dominant can resolve to different chords than the usual V→I resolution.
Lets hear how this sounded.

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Though the I7 had gone to the IV previously…

V7/IV

C7→Fmaj7


C→F

C7→F

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It’s going to a different chord as shown by the green arrows.
Though it doesn’t resolve, the key point here is that it doesn’t sound unnatural.

Lets listen to a number of examples of this.
All examples will be in the key of C.

Examples of Cadences that Don’t Resolve

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The idea here is that the E7 is placed before the chorus.
It starts with the I/Am of C major’s relative key, A minor.

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In this example, the E7 comes before the chorus as well.

After hearing the example with the Am/Am7 followed by the E7, you may have been expecting a minor feel but we deceptively changed it to the Fmaj7 to get a more common cadence.

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Next lets take a look at using the dominant to dominant progression.
First, the D7 will go to the G.

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Next, lets have a D7 go to F.
We have concluded with a II-V-I cadence.

We can decieve the listener into thinking a G or G7 would come next.

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Next, we will look at the I7 as seen in our previous article.
First we will have it resolve normally to the IV F major.

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Next we will try going from the C7 to the Bm7b5 as analyzed in our last article.

We connect to a minor II-V-I, giving it the sense that “it’s been a minor song all along”.

Though we had mentioned the need to resolve the secondary dominant in previous articles, as seen above, we can still get a natural sound without resolving the chord to the I.

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Of course dominant chords from relative keys can be borrored, as well as dominant keys, and subdominant keys, so try these out as well.

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If you find a secondary dominant chord that doesn’t resolve when analyzing music, be sure to add it to your arsenal of cadences.