Secondary Dominant Explorer

To navigate to the new pad destinations simply click on them with your mouse or if you prefer, use keyboard to speed things up.

The widget is designed to show you how dominant seventh chord will resolve to a temporary tonic, whilst not altering key in any permanent way. From here, you are able to create brief progressions, examine the voice leading and contrast chromatic against diatonic.

How to Use the Widget

The setup is located at the top where you will set your home key/mode. Select from a major or minor key using the drop down menu. Use the on/off toggle switches to select major/minor control mode. This controls the diatonic target that will be available for tonicization. Major keys uses ii, vi, while minor keys use III, iv, V, VI, and VII. The volume slider controls volume of all synthesized chords. Finally, the tempo slider change the playback speed of audio and resolution animations.

Select your target by clicking one of destination pads in the dark panel. A diatonic triad, which becomes new tonic for this part of the journey, is represented by each pad. Once selected, the triad appear in left-hand briefing panel together with its related secondary dominant. Click the rotation button to change the dominant chord’s inversion. This alters bass note but keeps the same pitch classes by rearranging upper voices. The chord tone buttons allows you to hear the dominant chord sounding separately. Clicking seventh or leading tone isolates these tendency voices. It then steps up to their resolution.

On the right is voice leading as shown in trajectory panel. This displays the voice leading associated with chosen resolution. Two lanes illustrate the descent of the seventh and rise of the third. It’s these tendency tones that provide the pull of the secondary dominant. Below the lanes are the diagnostic metrics indicating total semitone travel, bass motion, number of common tones, and whether there has been voice crossings. By toggling between these options in the resolution monitor, you can focus on specific voice leading behaviors during the resolution.

For quick results, press one of buttons for immediate playback of chords. To play the secondary dominant, hold down fire button; it resolves to the chosen target chord. If you want to compare the chromatic dominant resolution to a more diatonic approach, then use the contrast button. It shows contrasting tensions and colors of each option: staying in home key or borrowing a dominant chord.

With the queue button, you can queue up as many targets as you like to create a list for launching off. This lets you sequence tonicisations and move around key creating a chain of progression. Undo clears previous target from the queue. Home clears all.

Clicking the hero button on the bottom of trajectory panel executes a complete mission. It will play through your queue of secondary dominants in order and resolve them down to their temporary home note. If you want to hear root of each temporary tonic humming underneath the harmony, you can enable target beacon drone. If you turn the hold option on, it will keep playing instead of switching back to home tonic. Status messages will appear at the bottom updating you to what’s happening and describing current sound state.

For those practicing, there’s some keyboard shortcutting that speeds up navigation as well. You can use 1-5 on keyboard to select a destination pad right away. When pads are selected, use arrow keys to cycle through them. If you want to queue up what is currently selected, hit Q. To undo your previous selection, hit Z. To run the mission chain you’ve built, hit F. And finally, to activate whatever control is currently in focus, either spacebar it (like clicking it with a mouse) or hit enter. This allows you to try out progressions without having to reach for the mouse.

The help panel provide a quick reference for all controls and conventions. It’s activated with the how to play button in top right corner of the widget. To make it take up more screen area on bigger screens press the full screen button to go into fullscreen mode.

If you prefer to sing or play an instrument that doesn’t have as wide a range, use key selector to transpose whole exercise to an easier to reach range. Slow down tempo if you want to get a better understanding of how the voice leading works.

This tool is great for hearing how secondary dominants add colour without actualy changing keys. Try playing some pads to hear what it sounds like to temporary arrive somewhere before returning to original key. Begin by selecting a key then press one of the pads to hear the first resolution.