My Go-To Chord for Stealthy Modulations

I’ve got a sick chord for you. It’s my “go-to” for modulating to unrelated key centers and will give you all kinds of freedom for harmonic exploration.

It’s actually based on a secondary dominant chord. Remember what that is?

Here’s a hint:

Dominant = Five

That’s right. Each chord function has a name.

The I chord is called the tonic.
The ii chord is called the supertonic.
The iii chord is called the mediant.

And so on.

Now, the V chord is called the dominant, and if you make it a V7 chord, it’s called a dominant seventh chord.

So yes – that’s where the name dominant seventh chord comes from!

🤯

But a secondary dominant is a little different.

It’s still a V chord, but it’s not the V of the tonic or I chord.

Let’s back up a sec and apply some note names to make this more practical.

If you’re in the key of C, C Major is the I (tonic) and G Major is the V (dominant).

Think of C as the destination and G as the road to that destination.

Now, a secondary dominant is still a road that gets you to a destination, but it won’t take you to the I (tonic).

For instance, you could take a secondary dominant road that leads to the ii chord…

In the key of C Major, the ii chord is D Minor.

What’s the V (dominant) of D Minor?

A Major (or A7 if you want to use seventh chords).

So, A is the secondary dominant that leads to D Minor.

Making sense?

Let’s talk about how to make this chord sound even slicker (and sicker).

Instead of playing a regular A or A7 chord, put the third in the bass to get:

A/C# or A7/C#

It’s a subtle adjustment, but I like it because it’s a stealthy way to sneak into chords or keys, i.e. destinations, that might otherwise sound out of place.

The magic is twofold:

First, putting the third in the bass gives a chord a floatier quality. It’s less aggressive and brash.

Second, when you resolve to the corresponding I chord, the bass motion is super smooth.

In our example above, the C# resolving to a D is just a half step up.

Pretty smooth if you ask me – much less obvious than an A up to D.

If you’d like some more chordspiration, I highly recommend spending time learning good quality chord voicings.

You can come up with really cool chord progressions, but if your voicings are weak, the whole thing falls apart.

Conversely, a very basic chord progression can sound fantastic with quality voicings.

I’ve got a great resource for you. It’s called Sick Chords Volume 1 – a collection of my all-time favorite voicings for Major 7, Minor 7, and Dominant 7 chords, which you can use as secondary dominants, too!

You’ll get sheet music, audio files, and midi files to work these puppies into your music as quickly as possible.

Click here to learn more about Sick Chords Volume 1.

Happy Shedding!

Jeff