Dominant Chord

We have figured out what the tonic chord is: it's a major or a minor chord (depending on a melody) built on its “home base” note, which is stable and does not have any tension to resolve anywhere.

The next important type of a chord is a dominant chord, which is a major chord (always major, even for minor keys!) built on the fifth position (scale degree) of a scale. But since I promised not to use too many terms from music theory, I'll just say that the dominant starts on the top note of the tonic triad. If it's confusing, here's an example!

For a C major chord, which is C E G, the dominant chord is G major: G B D; it starts on G which is the top note of the C major chord. Try playing both chords:

We say that the dominant chord resolves to the tonic. To explain the concept of “resolving”, let me show you the first phrase of Happy Birthday song once again. Here, the blue note is where we come back to tonic, and the red note is where we can play the dominant chord, G major. Try playing the C and G chords where marked.

Do you hear how the G major chord makes the melody feel unfinished so that it wants to go back to the tonic chord C major?

It feels even stronger for melodies in minor keys. Let's play “Go Down Moses” in A minor. For the A minor chord, A C E, the dominant is E major. Here is the first phrase from the song, a little simplified; I'll also make it slower here so you had a chance to play chords.

I will always put major and minor buttons on different rows and will arrange buttons in a very specific order; you will get used to it and I will explain it later.

Try playing the melody with chords and notice how, whenever you play the E major chord, the tension of the music increases and it wants to go back home to A minor. That's the dominant chord!

I'll give you one more example before we go to the next topic, it's a classic nursery tune. I'll make it slow because the chord transitions happen often here. Let me play it in F major: F A C, then the dominant is C major.

Again, notice how any dominant chord (C major) here wants to resolve to the tonic (F major).