Secondary Dominants – Summary

To review:

Definition of Secondary Dominants:

A secondary dominant is a dominant functioning chord of a major or minor chord in a key other than tonic.

You can think of a secondary dominant as an altered chord that follows this format: X/Y where

X = V, V7, vii^o, vii^ø7, and vii^o7
Y = major or minor triad in the key other than I

A secondary dominant tonicizes the chord that follows it (the Y).

Steps for Analysis

To determine if there is a secondary dominant when you are analyzing a piece:

• Analyze any of the chords you can in the progression, first with jazz/pop symbols and then with roman numerals.
  
  
• For any chord that you do not know, determine the quality of the chords to see if it could be a secondary dominant. Is it a major or major-minor seventh (so could be a V/ or a V7/ of the next chord)? Is it a diminished, half-diminished or fully diminished seventh chord and so could be a viio/, viio7/, or viiø7/ chord (a secondary leading tone chord)?
  
  
• If the chord is a quality that could be a secondary dominant, determine the chord that it should resolve to.
  
  If the possible secondary dominant chord is a major triad or a major-minor seventh chord (e.g, it could be a V/ or a V7/ of the next chord), think of the root of the chord as the 5th scale degree and resolve it down a 5th to scale degree 1.
  
  If the possible secondary dominant chord is a diminished, half-diminished or fully-diminished seventh (i.e., so it could be a vii^o/, viio^ø7/, or vii^o7/), think of the root of the chord as scale degree 7 and resolve up a half step to scale degree 1.
  
  
• Determine if the chord after the possible secondary dominant is the chord it should resolve to. Is the root of the next chord the scale degree a 5th below the V chord or a half-step above the vii chord? If so, then analyze the chord as a secondary dominant of the next chord.

A Rule of Analysis

When providing an analysis of a piece of music, choose whatever method of analysis is going to show you what is actually going on in the piece.