A Lesson in Dominant 2 Chords
Taking a deep "submariner" dive into some hip voice leading.
It was December 3rd, 1965
Almost 60 years ago the Beatles released their sixth album, Rubber Soul, which was the starting point for “In My Life” to become one of the best songs ever. I mean EVER! Take a quick listen to the origianl, since that’s what we’ll reference for today’s lesson. Really pay attention to the back half of the chorus.
There are plenty of covers of this song, but one of my favorites is from James Hetfeild during a benefit performace for Acoustic-4-A-Cure. At the 1:43 mark of the video he adds in his own interlude, which just goes to show how versitile this song can be. If you’re into supporting great causes or love acoustic versions of songs, then CLICK/TAP HERE FOR MORE INFO. Now let’s jump into the lesson.
The Excerpt
“In My Life” is in the key of A Major (A Bm C♯m D E F♯m G♯°). The second half of the chorus uses F♯m and A, which both are from the key. The B and Dm chords are not from the key of A Major. To make things worse (in a good way), I recalled this song from memory and played it incorrectly for quite some time. Below is the same excerpt from the second half of the chorus show how it is correctly played in the recording, and… how incorrectly I played it from memory. Skip to the 1:55 mark of the first video to here this. Also, the incorrect parts are highlighted in red.
In the correct version, the Dm chord works because is a “iv” or “minor 4 chord”. If you’re not familiar with Roman Numeral Analysis, then just think of each chord in the key getting a number. Uppercase means its a major chord. Lowercase means its a minor chord. Then you apply any extra symbols after that.
A iv in a major key is a typical addition found in many love songs. When a song ends a section with a movement from the IV chord to the I chord, it is called a Plagal Cadence. “Minoring the 4” chord creates a iv to I or Minor Plagal Cadence. To get past the jargan, think of a church song ending with, “AH____ men___.” “AH” is the IV chord and “men” is the I chord. Changing to a iv softens the “AH” to an “ah”. In a love song, this can be applied to an ending lyric of “…love you.”, where a iv softens “love” and still ends strongly on a I chord with “you.”
The B chord stood out for me for a long time as this weird Beatles movement. I think that is why I started using B7 instead of B, because to me it feels like a dominant chord in the way it stands out. To get a feel for this, try playing all seven chords in A Major. Now play that again, but the second chord is a B major chord. It’s nice, but it really stands out.
The Anomoly
So what is happening here? Well the D major chord that is from the key of A Major uses the notes D, F♯, A. The F♯ is the first important note because flattening it to F creates a Dm chord, which uses the notes D, F, and A.
The next part is that B chord. It also uses the note F♯, but it also has a D♯. Below I have both chords organized with the lowest tones to the bottom of the chart and with space to show how high or low in pitch each tone each from B to Dm. When moving from B to Dm there are two notes that flatten: F♯ to F and D♯ to D. Flattening F♯ to F helps create the start of a Minor Plagal Cadence. Flattening D♯ thre me for a loop for quite a while. To understand why, let’s first look at this with my mistakes.
Below we have the correct chords of B and Dm, along with my added mistakes of B7 and D. Three of these chords use the note A. In terms of voice leading, this works great because that note does not move in pitch. It just keep doning on. In terms of the B chord, not having the note A isn’t a big deal. Think of the B chord as a B7 chord, but without the note that makes it a “7”. Without the note A, B7 is just B.
Here’s where the B7 came from. Above (and from the incorrect example earlier on) we can see that B7 to D to Dm flattens two notes, but in steps. B7 to D lets the note D♯ flatten to D. Then D to Dm allows the note F♯ to flatten to F. So what I did is the same thing as the Beatles version, but in more steps. Check out the next chart so you can compare both.
Using the chords B to Dm, the Beatles took the notes F♯ and D♯ down to F and D. Done.
#1: I used the chord B7 and introduced the note A early.
#2: Then I moved to the chord D and flattened the note D♯ to D.
#3: I finished by arriving at the chord Dm. This delayed the flattening of the note F♯ to F.
The Implication
So both versions sound cool to me. You choose whatever flavor you like. The point is that there are options, which brings us to what the B7 chord implies. Below is the Roman Numeral Analysis of my incorrect version.
To see how cool this II7 chord is, we first need to look at the tried and true ii-V-I progression. A ii-V-I (aka 2-5-1) moves in fifths. This means that the ii chord is the fifth of V, and the V chord is the fifth of I. A more detailed approach goes in reverese. The I chord of A uses the notes A-C#-E, which each note uses degree numbers 1-3-5. With the note E as the 5th degree, E7 is the “fifth” of A major. When we look at E7 using the notes E-G#-B-D as degrees 1-3-5-♭7, the 5th degree note is B, so Bm is the “fifth” of E7.
In the key of A Major, Bm, E7, and A are the ii, V7, and I chords. So it is a ii-V-I progression. This is common in a lot of musical styles, but shows up a lot in Jazz. So much that the phrase “twoing the five” means to play a minor 2 chord before a dominant 5 chord that leads somewhere. That somewhere is often the 1 chord.
“In My Life” is no exception. F#m is the ii of B7 as a V7. The differnce is that B7 is not leading us a fifth to E major. It takes us to Dm.
Leading On
When we use a V7 to I movement, like in B7 to E, the 3rd degree of the V7 chord is the Lading Tone of E. This just means that is is the seventh note in the scale and has a function that helps move to the first degree of the scale. In the key of E Major we have E, F#, G#, A, B, C#, D#. The Leading Tone is D# and it pulls our ears upward to the next pitch, which is E.
Above we have B7 moving to E. We also have B7 moving to D or Dm. Whether D or Dm follows B7, there is one key feature that stands our to me. When we hear B7, we expect the note D# to “lead” us somewhere. That is usually the note E, which is a half-step above D#. That’s where this gets interesting.
Moving from B7 to D let’s the note D# lower to the note D. We can use D or Dm as the I or i chord and in either chord the note D is the 1st degree. That makes the note D# a ♭2.
Think of the degree ♭2 as an Inverse Leading Tone. Instead of pulling us up to the 1st degree, we get pulled down to the first degree. Now for the what this implies.
When a dominant chord is used, our ears tend to hear the beginning of a resolution, which is a movement from higher tension to lower tension. Even though B7 does not move to E, it still moves to a lower tension chord. The way it does this is by allowing the notes in B7 to move throught the 4 chord to a new 1 chord as shown below in four steps.
Keep in mind that TECHNICALLY I should use the note E♭ as the ♭2 of D, but for the sake of spelling out the notes of the chord B7 I opted to use D# throughout this lesson only because we are manipulating the key of A Major. A Major’s notes are A, B, C#, D, E, F#, G#. The third chord in this key is Bm and it uses the note D as its ♭3rd degree. Changing Bm to B7 would raise that degree to 3, this D becomes D#. WHEW!
“Sixing” the II7 to Access the 4
So what does this mean for you? It really just”suggestes” that you can play the vi chord in a major key and use it as the ii chord of a II7, which then leads to a Tonic. Instead of going from vi to II7 to V7 to I, you can play vi to II7 to ANY TYPE OF 4 CHORD to I. That’s a pretty cool option to have. Espcially if you want to use a domiant chord to get to a tonic while also using a type of plagal cadence. It’s the best of both worlds!
I played around with this concept of a vi-II7-4-I (where 4 is IV or iv) quite a lot and then thought, “Will this work in a Minor key?” Well it does. The progression in Minor keys is vi-II7-iv-i. There are tons of options on how to apply this. Just keep in mind that the vi and II7 chords do not belong to any Minor keys. To make the vi chord sound good I applied it to the following progression: F△-F#m7-B7-Dm7-Dm7♭5-Am which is ♭VI-vi7-II7-iv7-iv7♭5-i. I added in F△ as a way to slide into F#m7. I also added Dm7♭5 as a tense chord that brings our ears to Am in the end.
Try out all kinds of combinations with dominant chords where the third degree note of a dominant chord is either the Leading Tone of a targeted note, or it is the ♭2 of another targeted note. Either way, the third degree of a dominant is leading you up or down a half-step.
Let me know what you think by leaving a comment. Until next time!
