Dominant Seventh Chords?

Dominant Seventh Chords?…

Chord Names & Types

A chord has a name - the root or letter name of the chord and chord type information. REMEMBER: Dominant is not a chord type — it is a chord function.

Most chords are built by stacking intervals of a third and start as triads. 4-part chords are additional notes added to these triads. The traditional triads are: major, minor, diminished, and augmented. Notice No Dominant.

To determine the function of a chord, you need to do a Harmonic Analysis (HA) which is the subject of several other lessons and the book Harmonic Analysis for Scale Selection and Chord Substitution by your LearningUkulele.com host and creator, Curt Sheller.

Here are the traditional function names of the scale degrees of a Diatonic major scale:

Example triads in the Key of C Major .

• First note and chord: Tonic — I , C
• Second note and chord: Supertonic — II , Dm
• Third note and chord: Mediant — III , Em
• Fourth note and chord: Subdominant — IV , F
• Fifth note and chord: Dominant — V , G, G7*
• Sixth note and chord: Submediant — VI , Am
• Seventh note and chord: Leading/Subtonic — VII , B°

* G7 , a 4-part chord was/is so commonly used with triads that it is included for the V chord.

Notice, again that Dominant IS a function. We don't call the C, C Tonic?

…the demand of the V7 for resolution is, to our ears, almost inescapably compelling. The dominant seventh is, in fact, the central propulsive force in our music; it is unambiguous and unequivocal. — Goldman, 1965

We don't call other seventh chords: the Tonic Seventh, Supertonic Seventh, Secondary Dominant Seventh, etc… Dominant IS the harmonic function of a chord — NOT part of its name.

And, it gets stranger when music theorist really dive deep in to explain harmonic cells and want to apply a name to them. Terms such as: Extended Dominant, Tertiary Dominant, Quaternary Dominants, etc.

With ALL of that said — we do, as musicians, whether a hobbyist are seasoned professionals, need to know both the correct traditional terms and the everyday street terms used to communicate music. Humans and musicians tend to make up names if they don't know an answer to a musical question.

Our Western Harmony is based around the Tonic and Dominant relationship when a dominant chord wants to resolve the it's Tonic chord.