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Secondary dominants are often used to anticipate the natural dominant of the
song. For example, in the previous case, the natural dominant of the song was G7,
so we could play another dominant before it to prepare going into G. Observe:
G’s dominant is D7. So, we would have the sequence | D7 | G7 | C |, where D7 is the
secondary dominant. This dominant is also called “dominant of the dominant“,
since it serves as dominant for another dominant.
In terms of nomenclature, it is customary to use the notation V7/V7 or V7/V to
highlight that it is a secondary dominant for another dominant (of the fifth degree).
If you were, for example, a secondary dominant preparing for the fourth degree,
we would write V7/ IV.
Application
Very well, the concept of a secondary dominant is already clear. Now we are going
to show the implications that this concept can have. As the dominant V7 is always
a fifth above the chord it is going to resolve, we can “play” with successive circles
of fifths. In the previous case, we played D7 before G7, but we could also play A7
before D7 and E7 before A7, forming the following sequence:
| E7 | A7 | D7 | G7 | C |
This sequence is one preparation after another, which was resolved only at the
end in C. First, E7 prepared for A, but A was in the seventh, preparing for D, and so
on until ending in C. This type of progression is widely used in jazz.
As we have already seen, these are “extended dominants”, as they form a circle of
fifths (or of fourths, depending on which side you are looking at). The concept is
simple, they are only dominant. We can improvise on them using the
Mixolydian mode of each dominant, or the other approaches that we will study
later on (later topics). Of course, this improvisation is not always easy, since these
passages can be very fast, which would make the solo difficult. That is why it is
important to train a lot on this topic, after all secondary dominants appear a lot in
the harmoniously rich styles (jazz, bossa nova, mpb, etc.).