 Hi everyone. So, welcome to this part of our series on minor progressions where we are going to explore the dominant chord which is that middle chord and what all it can do all the possibilities basically all the ways to embellish probably the chord which can be embellished the most in music which is the dominant chord. So, I have put together a few options these may not be all the options but these are things which I really like the vibe and the sound of and which I feel are the go to kind of possibilities for my kind of music as well as various kinds of artists who I follow around the globe. So, in our chord progression and if you haven't already do head over and watch all the other parts or at least part one to get acquainted with the chord progression and you will find that our chord progression is G minor, A major, D minor. It's a minor chord progression or derived around the minor tonality or the minor scale. So, you go G minor, A major, D minor. So, it's that A major which is what we call as the dominant chord and our goal in this video is to spice up that particular chord the A chord or the A major chord. Now, you may be arguing why didn't I take A minor because in a D harmonic minor scale you will have an A minor which is the five minor right but I am choosing A dominant or A major rather so that it kind of really has that leading connection or that leading tone which takes us to that D minor or you could look at A major as being borrowed from the D harmonic minor scale. Okay. So, you have A. The first way to color it up is just by using what's called as the dominant seventh chord. Okay. Take a major at the dominant seventh note. What is the dominant seventh note to form it? It's G with respect to A. Right. Sounds a little bit tense right. That's the point. It's supposed to resolve to the next chord. So, you have A C sharp E G. Now, we look at this as a major chord with A flat 7. In this case G. A C sharp E. A C sharp E G. Okay. So, that's your dominant seventh chord which resolves to the tonic. So far, we have the pre-dominant chord and there were a lot of colorful things which were done with the pre-dominant chord. So, head over to the earlier parts. Part two and part three will really guide you with various pre-dominant chord colors. That's the first chord of this progression. I talked about E diminished, G minor, some bigger chords you know or bluesy chords. So, head over to those parts and check those out before you come here or you can follow along. The first chord pre-dominant then the dominant chord you could voice like this on the piano. I quite like that. I don't like playing it all together. Sometimes it's tough for me to play all the four notes with one hand. So, I kind of divide it. You can do A E then G C sharp. Sounds quite nice. Or A G C sharp E. You can do it that way or a more common way is this way or this way. You take the root and the fifth in your left and either the seventh flat or the three in your right or three and the seventh flat at the top. So, that's your dominant. So, the dominant seventh chord sounds a lot more usable and a lot more sophisticated, right? If you remember that melody we've been working with. Resolves back to the minor tonic. So, that's your default shape, your seventh chord shape. Okay. Now, how do we color that up further? Another nice chord which I really enjoy using is the seventh sus 4. So, you go A D E G. How did we create that particular chord? This is the normal dominant seventh chord. A dominant seventh. Create the seventh sus 4. Knock off the third and play the fourth. So, A D E G. That's another great way to color it. So, okay. Okay. Now, let's look at a couple of other options which you may not have heard very often, right? So, you can do this way. I really like that one where you don't play an A major or an A dominant. You play an A augmented. So, how do we form an augmented chord now? You take a major chord and you sharpen or you raise the fifth interval. Take the E, E sharp is who? F. Creates this very, very dreamy and confused kind of sound, right? Resolve it back to minor. So, that's another way to color the dominant instead of playing vanilla A major. We do A augmented. Okay. Then, there are a few other shapes which I want to leave with you. The other thing could be take an A seventh A major with the dominant seventh and add the flat nine. Okay. But you need to voice it well. So, voice it like that. And the flat nine is nothing but the second note of this from that root. The second flat rather, this is the normal second B. Go down a flat to B flat and play it amidst all the other tonalities which already form the seventh chord. A C sharp E G B flat. This is normal A major. You could play it like this. A C sharp E G at the B flat. I love that. So, that's the flat nine. Flat nine, you could play it higher if you want. It really elevates that sound. Okay. You can also visualize an A seven flat nine as maybe playing A G here and then adding a chord you may already know like maybe an E diminished, E diminished seventh. There are many ways of visualizing it. So, for now, this is a way I would go with A G C sharp E G at the top and then add the B flat with your thumb. Or you can knock off the G because it's already repeated. Just do that or that or E G B flat. Basically, a diminished triad in the right hand and A and G in the left hand. So, a few more colorful options for the dominant chord. I'll just play you and then explain. Okay. What is that now? That is basically playing a B flat minor voicing in the right hand and an A seventh in the left hand rather a very clear option where you do A and a G. This is like an A seven flat nine because you have that flat nine there and you also have this interesting sharp five sound. And another thing with these dominant chords is you could also play that rather weird chord which is B flat minor over A seventh or A seventh flat nine sharp five if you will. You could play that then resolve it to normal A seventh which I taught you at the beginning of the lesson and then resolve to D minor. So, you could look at the dominant itself going in two stages or two phases. So, it also inspires your melodic soloist or your vocalist to kind of come up with different phrase ideas. That's the flat nine going to a B flat A and the F provides that augmented tension or that sharp five flavor play flavor. So, I've added essentially an A seventh with that augmented note F and the B flat. So, good way to visualize this is play B flat minor in your right hand and play A G in your left hand. Results quite well. Another thing which I like to use quite often is to play well I'm just calling it F sharp major in your right hand and an A dominant seventh in your left hand. Lot of tension if you ask me. We call it like an A 13th because that's the 13th interval F sharp 13th is also like the major sixth played up the octave after the dominant seventh you have the major third and then of course you have the flat nine which already gave us the tension. So, resolve it may be to the dominant and then back to tonic. I'm going to also link you up to one of my album songs called when the mice play where it's pretty much everything on this minor tonality and I'm trying to build up at least what I think is a very very interesting theme and these really interesting sophisticated sometimes surreal themes can't really come from the major scale you'll have to go a bit beyond and minor scale is a great start you know to build these very surreal very nostalgic kind of sounds or very out of the world dystopian kind of sounds right so I like that can visualize that chord as F sharp major in the right and an A seventh in the left there's actually like an A flat nine A seven flat nine at 13 and yeah these are pretty much how ways in which you can color up the dominant chord and the dominant chord is a very very colorful chord there are a lot of possibilities to shape that I've also talked about the predominant chord in the earlier parts if you haven't already do check that out so this lesson was about how you color up the dominant chord over a minor chord progression and moving forward we just have the tonic chord the tonic minor chord so let's dive in to the tonic chord but I'll leave you with the dominant chord for now so you could digest this information and once you got a hang of it do head over to the next part and we are going to talk about the tonic chord and how to color it there are also quite a few notes for these lessons do check that out with a booklet which I have made on patreon it'll also be great if you can head over there and support our channel it'll really grow with your help cheers catch you in the next one