 Hi guys, welcome to part 2 of this series on building minor progressions. So in the first part we learnt the three basic chords G minor which is the 4 or what we call as the predominant of the D minor scale, G becomes the fourth interval right and then we did the 5 major which is coming from the harmonic minor scale and then that resolves to D minor. So the 5 becomes the primary dominant or the dominant chord if you will and that resolves to the minor tonic and like I said in part 1 we could use the chords or the available chords of both the minor scales natural minor as well as harmonic minor which is a very important approach when you are building minor chord progressions. You don't have to always stick with the textbook approach of getting the chords only from that scale. You can always borrow it from all of those parallel minor scales the natural, the harmonic, even the Dorian and sometimes even the melodic minor and maybe even a few more like the Phrygian minor okay. So what we are going to do now in this part is we are going to try and colour up each one of these chords and each of the chords have functions. You have the pre, you have the dominant and you have the tonic. So let's first start by colouring up the pre. So by colouring up the pre dominant chord in some instances we may change the chord, in some instances we may add more notes to the chord to make it more jazzy or more add more colour or what we sometimes call as tensions. In some instances we may even leave the scale. So I am going to try and keep a consistent melody as I have suggested you in part one as well which is okay. Get used to singing that if you haven't already. You could even pause the video and head over to part one. Okay so now you can take the pre dominant chord and have a few opportunities with respect to the pre dominant chord. The first thing you can do is find another pre dominant chord. So instead of the G minor chord you could look at an E diminished chord instead which A serves the same function, the pre dominant function and B it kind of has similar notes to the G minor chord in the first place right. G minor is G B flat D while E diminished is E G B. Same almost the same notes yeah. So you could play which is E diminished that's A major resolving to D minor. So either you do G minor or E diminished and both roads lead to that A which then can lead to the D minor. Now you could also combine these two chords. So if you what happens when you combine G minor and E diminished you get a bigger chord right. You'll have four notes in the entire chord. So just to give you an idea G minor is G B flat D right. E diminished is E G B flat. So if I add that E to the G minor chord it creates a G minor sixth vibe. It's a very mysterious vibe. So you could go you just made the G minor a bit more sophisticated right or you could look at this as an E diminished chord and add the D which is the remaining note of the G minor chord which is not there in the E diminished chord. So you have E diminished at the D and also you get a clue because the melody I composed has the D in any case right. So it works great. So what did we do if you're playing G minor you add the E making it a G minor sixth or if you're playing E diminished what is that remaining note which is common between E diminished as well as G minor the D. What do we call this chord? We call this an E minor seventh flat five. How do we form that again? This would be E minor when you flat the five it becomes B flat and then minor seventh which is the D. D sharp would have been major seventh. Minor seven brings it down to D. Okay that's one flavoring you can do. So what did we say so far? We have the G minor chord. You can also play the E diminished chord. They both serve the same predominant function if you will and then that can resolve to the dominant which resolves to the tronic. We colored up both those chords by adding the remaining note which that chord did not have in common with each other. So for E diminished we added the D for G minor we added the E. Creates a more sort of sophisticated sound if you will. Another way to kind of color up the predominant chord is to just add some of these so-called jazz tensions. So if you start with a G minor you can add a seventh or what we call as a minor seventh. So that automatically makes it a bit more sophisticated. You could add that. So the seventh is F with respect to G. You could also build it up further by adding a ninth interval. So a ninth is nothing but a two played along with the seventh or along with the entire minor triad but generally played upper. So you're just spicing up that predominant. That's the ninth. That's the minor seventh. While the minor ninth. You may want to even touch up or change the melody a bit because these chords will also inspire new new tune. So feel free to change your melody. But even the existing melody kind of works. You can also perhaps even add a 11th interval. So a 11th is nothing but a fourth played alongside the minor chord. The minor seventh. So you do all that. That's the 11th note. So right. So the root is G and the top interval is that sort of a melody works really well. If you want to get a minor 11th sound you could also look at it like a G bass and you can do like a D minor seventh in your right hand. That's an easy way to visualize it. D minor seventh over G. Back to A and end on D. So that's another way to color up your predominant chord. Just add these jazz tensions. We've looked at the seventh. We've looked at the ninth. We've also looked at the 11th. Okay. So moving on. Another way you can color the predominant chord is by basically replacing the chord altogether by another chord. So I'm going to look at two versions of B flat major which are going to help us along the predominant. I use this quite often in my music as well. So the first version is the sort of romantic kind of sound. What did I do there? B flat major seventh. Okay. So this is B flat major along with the A at the top major seventh. A quick way to play this in a more effective way on the piano is look at it as D minor in your right hand and B flat in the left hand. So you go. So that major seventh gives it a more dreamy ambient or sometimes romantic kind of flavor. Even if you color that major seventh further, you can do and it kind of works really well because B flat major seventh shares two notes in common with the original chord we were playing which is G minor. Okay. So another chord you could look at around the same B flat root will be a B flat dominant seventh. Now this is sure to not have one note as part of the D minor scale. Right. So it completely takes us a bit off the radar. Sounds really beautiful though. Very heavy and you know, a very weighty sound. Use a lot in blues actually. Guitar players will go crazy over this. Okay. So that is replacing the original pre dominant options of G minor and E diminished by a non-diatonic option which is B flat dominant seventh. Now there may be a lot of theory around this why it works. You know, you could say it's borrowed from an E dominant chord. You know, it's borrowed and you can call it a tritone substitution but maybe we'll get into that in a later video. Just know that B flat major seventh sounds great. B flat dominant seventh also sounds great but has a little bit more chaos going around it. Right. Now you can develop music like this. Okay. So what have we done so far? We've taken the B flat root. We've taken B flat major seventh, B flat dominant seventh and that can go really nicely to the A which is the dominant and then that results to the tonic D minor which still feels at home. So let's just look at the same melody over the B flat major seventh version and then the same melody over the B flat dominant version. That's B flat major seventh then more tension B flat dominant. Beautiful sounds. Right. So moving on. Another great chord you could try out at the predominant stage is basically a chord which will lead into the dominant chord via a chapter in music called a secondary dominance. Okay. Again we can focus on this in a later theory chapter but this chord will be the E seventh chord. The E seventh may not be part of the D minor scale, may not have anything to do with the D minor scale but it really wants to go to the A dominant and then the A dominant wants to go to the D minor. So it's just like a chain reaction. The E dominant seventh chord has nothing to do with the D minor realm but that's sort of what the B flat dominant also was doing. Right. And now what a lot of musicians do jazz musicians and the like is they will take the E seventh because it's already kind of a tense chord and what you tend to do with all these dominant seventh chords is you tend to enrich it or add even more flavor to it. So you could go you could do E seventh with basically a flat nine. How did I create a flat nine? That's a normal nine F sharp come down to F that'll be an E seventh flat nine makes the journey a lot more interesting. That's this is another great option. You could even do an E seventh sharp nine especially guitar music if you're a fan of people like Jimi Hendrix. They use that voicing or that shape a lot. So this is an E seventh with a sharp nine G or both comes to A major and then comes to D minor. So that's another way to color the pre-dominant. Wow this is a lot of color. So you go let's try and recap that entire E movement. So you have E seventh or E dominant resolving to A seventh which then is still unstable. So then it resolves back to D minor and then you have the even more colorful options. So you'll have E seventh flat nine or E seven sharp nine. So a lot of options to color up your pre-dominant chords right there right. So moving forward we're going to look at a few more interesting ways to color up the pre-dominant chord. So practice these things hard and I will see you in the next part coming your way shortly. And if you haven't already subscribe hit notifications so you'll get a reminder when we release the lesson and consider downloading the my hand written notes. It may help you with your learning and support our channel on Patreon. See you in the next part.