Note: If you’d prefer to hear the chords below rather than read them described in technical terms, I’ve recorded them in a mini-podcast with commentary. It’s at the end of the post.
I’ve also created a Word doc with guitar and piano notation for some of the chords I’m talking about.
If you had instrument lessons when you were a kid, chances are you hated having to learn music theory - all that seemingly pointless shedaddle about time signatures, perfect and imperfect cadences, the cycle of fifths, blah, blah, piffle.
But music theory isn’t just for geeky viola players. Knowing just a bit of theory can drag your songwriting up to a whole new level.
Take, for example, the question of resolution - known to theory geeks as cadence. In the most basic terms, resolution is about how one chord sets up a feeling of expectation that leads naturally (’resolves’) to another. Understanding resolution is useful when you’re coming to the end of a sequence and finding your way back to the tonic chord.
The tonic, in case you were wondering, is the chord that has the same name as they key you’re writing in (so, E major or Bb minor, or whatever) and which, played in the context of that key, has a settled or finished feel to it.
The chord that most obviously resolves on to the tonic is called the dominant. It’s always a fifth above the tonic. So the dominant of C major is G major; of G major, D major; of A minor, E major. Note that minor tonic chords still have major dominants.
In a great deal of music the dominant chord has a minor seventh added to it, to make a seventh chord. If you play D major seventh (D7), you can hear that it really, really wants to resolve on to G (or Gm). Play E7, and you can hear it wanting to resolve on to A (or Am).
Thing is, the dominant isn’t the only chord you can use to resolve on to the tonic. It’s not always the best choice, either. A dominant–>tonic resolution, especially if the dominant has an added seventh, such as D7–>G, can actually sound a bit cheesy and ‘pat’.
If you’re in the key of G major, all of these chords will resolve on to the tonic: (N.B. ‘C/D’ means ‘a chord of C with a D in the bass’)
D D7 C C/D Cmaj7/D Am/D
Those are chords based on the fifth (D), fourth (C) and second (A) notes of the scale. In the key of E major, they would look like this:
B B7 A A/B Amaj7/B F#m/B
In a minor key, your choices are a bit more limited, but not by much. In the key of A minor you can resolve to the tonic chord using…
E E7 Dm7 (bit weak) F (weaker still)
All of these chords will give your resolution a slightly different flavour. Whereas a straight D or D7–>G resolution sounds very straightforward, Cmaj7/D–>G sounds rich and lush.
(You can make the Cmaj7/D even lusher by dropping the E to an Eb for a major/minor sound, or by adding a D - i.e, a ninth. As with all songwriting and improvisation, the trick is learn the basics then go and play around with ideas in different keys.)
Finally, remember the dominant doesn’t have to resolve on to the tonic - it can go more or less anywhere: D7–>Am, D7–>C and so on. Here’s a good example of a song where the dominant crops up a lot - ‘Slight Return’ by The Bluetones. The song is in D major, and if you look at the chord sequence you can see the dominant - A7 - often lands on the chord below, G, before moving back up again. This version of the song finishes with a lovely little solo by Adam Devlin - right at the end you can hear him play the resolving sequence G–>A7–>D really clearly. (The crappy subtitles aren’t mine, by the way):
OK, now that I’ve blinded you with science, listen to the podcast and hear it all make sense before your very ears. Click the play button to listen, or download the mp3 direct if you’re behind a paranoid firewall.
Oh, and don’t forget the notes in the accompanying Word doc, which includes all the main chords I’ve been talking about. Any questions, post ‘em below or grab me on Twitter.
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