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I've been playing Angel Band by Ralph Stanley a lot recently. The verse ends on the I chord and the chorus starts on the V. I'd love to find a good transition chord between the two, something that pulls from the I to the V the way the I7 pulls to the IV.

Any suggestions? The tricky part is that the chord can't sound out of place in a traditional American (folk/old time/bluegrass) context, so fancy jazzy chords are right out (the Imaj7 walks right up to that line).

Any other suggestions for good transition chords?

crazybilly
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1 Answers1

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There are several possibilities, but here are some:

  1. You say you want a transitional chord similar to how "the I7 pulls to the IV." Well, this I7 is what we call a secondary dominant to the IV; in other words, it's just the V7 of the IV chord (indeed, that's typically a better way to describe it since it's more specific). So, your transitional chord could just be the V7 of V, which is very common. If you're in C, I is C and V is G. You want the V7 of V (=G), which would be a D7 chord. Try that!

  2. More generally, the I chord has what we call "tonic" function and the V chord has what we call "dominant" function. There's also a group of chords that we call "predominants" that smoothly lead from tonic to dominant; common predominants are IV and ii, with vi happening occasionally. So you can use either an F major, D minor, or A minor chord to transition from I to V.

All of these chords will absolutely fit in the style you described.

Richard
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  • Not wishing to criticise your obvious knowledge - how is I7 the secondary dominant of IV? I thought secondary dominants were the dominant OF the dominant - as yopu stated, D7 to go to G in key C. Maybe I read it incorrectly. – Tim Aug 04 '16 at 06:46
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    Interesting; perhaps this is the case in some circles, but I've always heard "secondary dominant" being used to mean a chord chromatically altered to become the dominant of another chord. Thus "I7" is the dominant of IV, making I7 a secondary dominant in the overall key. – Richard Aug 04 '16 at 06:49
  • I think that a chord can only be dominant to one other - that which is a 4th up. And a secondary dominant is the V of THAT chord. Possibly? But you're right, the D7 in C is the most appropriate to use to get to the bridge, etc., starting in G, where the rest of the song is in C. It sounds as if the song has modulated, or more likely, changed key, which it hasn't I don't think. +1. – Tim Aug 04 '16 at 06:52
  • I've personally never heard the term used in that narrow of a sense. A D7 is a secondary dominant in C, but it's not the ONLY secondary dominant in C. http://music.stackexchange.com/questions/22057/what-is-a-secondary-dominant-chord – Richard Aug 04 '16 at 06:57
  • Like E7 would be the secondary dominant of Am, in C again? But I can't see that I7 is a secondary dominant of IV, as it's actually its dominant. Where did I go wrong? I think that it's a fact that any chord other than the dominant (V) can become a secondary dominant. Is that it? – Tim Aug 04 '16 at 07:01
  • The confusion might be with the use of the word "secondary," which I do now realize is confusing. Secondary doesn't mean "dominant to the second power," but rather that the chord is not diatonic to the overall key (the exception being V of IV, which is equivalent to I). Now I wonder what the origin of the term secondary is! Perhaps it started as your sense of the word but colloquially evolved to just mean any applied dominant. – Richard Aug 04 '16 at 07:05
  • Now it's starting to make sense! Perhaps someone else could put their tuppenceworth in. Dom, where are you? So, secondary is not an apposite term for this phenomenon... – Tim Aug 04 '16 at 07:10
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    @Tim, secondary dominant is just a dominant chord that stands in a fifth relationship to some other root than the tonic. Richard is entirely correct here. It's called secondary because the dominant of the tonic region is primary in Common Practice harmony. It's secondary in the sense that it implies a move to a secondary (in the sense of "subordinate" and "impermanent") tonal region. –  Aug 05 '16 at 01:01
  • @Richard - I know it's only semantics, but could 'dominant secondary' be a more accurate term? – Tim Aug 07 '16 at 07:31
  • @Tim Perhaps, but at that point we'd be fighting against decades of use of a popularly-used term, and I'm not sure how successful we'd be. I *almost* used my preferred term, "applied dominant," but I've found that it's much less commonly used that "secondary dominant." Maybe you'll like that one better! – Richard Aug 07 '16 at 10:04
  • @Richard - I think anything could be better. The original doesn't really encapsulate what it actually is. It's good to use words that properly mean what they say. Old English saying: call a spade a spade! – Tim Aug 07 '16 at 11:08