Making V-I More Interesting Part 1: The V Side 1

A V-I cadence (e.g. a Gmajor triad followed by a Cmajor triad) still is one of the strongest harmonic devices in music. As I've written in my tutorial about voicings the duality between tension and resolution is a fundamental concept in music.

And particularly the V-I cadence is a century old prototype for this concept. In fact, when you look at many pieces from the classical period (e.g. Mozart) the harmonic movement is very often reduced to little more than V-I cadences.

And while the harmonic strength of this cadence is undeniable, this same power makes it very predictable. Even musically rather uneducated people can anticipate a I when they hear a V being set up. Resolving a straight forward G7 to a C sounds in most cases pretty pedestrian nowadays and the lack of musical surprise can make music extensively based on this sound either boring or "very classical".

Consequentially, many musicians and composers have looked for ways to keep the musical force of such a cadence alive yet still trying to come up with ways to create a slightly less predictable shape for it.

There are several common ways to spice up both sides of this progression. In this part, we're going to focus on the V side leaving the the target chord of C untouched.

These strategies are what we could call reharmonisations of the V. I'm trying to show the most common and universally applicable versions, which however are relatively mild reharmonisations and not try to turn the progression completely upside down. So we're trying to keep the dominant feel of this chord and also try to not substitute it by inserting a chord progression that extends it. However, be aware that there are many more that are more depending on musical context. But also some of the examples below are more  and some less successful in the context I present them. However, just because they don't work that well in this particular context doesn't mean that they always don't work well.

So let's start with this little sequence:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/basic-melody/s-7Xg2xTobQTu

A harmonized version could look something like this:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/progression-harmonized/s-y6bUBAoOXBT

(We're looking at this from a more contemporary approach which also allows us more liberty with the amount of voices and certain parallelisms that would be problematic in strict four part harmony. Yet this approach is what we would also be more likely to see in modern film/game scores)

We're focussing here on the second last chord, the others are just to provide a bit of context for the changes that we make.

The most basic progression (as mentioned above) would be to have this V-I being executed through a dominant 7 chord, making the G major triad into a G7:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/g7-1/s-hJX2fNfj6L3

As expected, this sounds rather classical and very expectable and depending on how you look at it boring.

Sus4

An easy way to give this chord a bit more life would be to harmonize it as a sus4 chord. A sus4 chord basically means that the major third of the triad (in our case the note B) gets replaced by the fourth of the scale (in our case C). The "sus" stands for "suspension", as usually this note gets resolved to the major third before the whole chord resolves to the tonic. However, this is not mandatory anymore. You can resolve a sus4 chord straight to a tonic nowadays without anybody finding it awkward.

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/gsus4/s-AdE3DjmOszX

However, resolving the sus4 to the third usually feels musically more logical:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/g4-3/s-XxiBdvECcII

7sus4

In combination with a sus 4, the dominant seventh sounds way less classical and actually adds a bit of harmonic interest:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/g7sus4/s-YMXR6A1QF9P

Notice that I didn't just add the dominant 7th here bit also the ninth (a) to this chord. So technically, the chord symbol should be a G9sus4. However, everybody with a piano background knows that a standard shortcut to come up with a 7sus4 voicing is to simply take the bass note of the chord and play a major triad a whole step below that note on top of it. Effectively that means in this case to play a F major triad on top of a G bass. As in this case, I had a melody note of D on top, I needed to include that as well. In some cases (charts by lazy musicians), you might even see the chord symbol F/G instead, which however I don't recommend using as it doesn't explain the function of the chord as well as narrowing down the voicing choices. Reading G7sus4 gives you the freedom to voice it according to it's function, not according to the lazy shortcut someone came up with.

7sus4b9

A more bittersweet alternative is to replace that rather nice sounding 7sus4 chord with a small yet quite dramatic alternative of lowering the ninth (A) to a b9 (Ab).

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/g7sus4b9/s-ki6Ct5YhQ07

Notice how this version sounds strikingly more dramatic than the options we had so far. 

This version of the V is even more effective when you resolve it to a minor tonic (e.g. Cm) but also works quite well in major. If you would arrange this example for orchestra, contrary to what is written above, you should definitely write an inner line that moves from the Ab in the G7sus4b9 chord to a G a semitone lower in the C chord as this is a possibility for a strong voice leading that you definitely shouldn't miss.

However you could also introduce that motion already on the V side of this progression. Effectively we have two notes here that you could resolve before making the step to the next chord. This is particularly nice when you span a quite long time with a dominant chord. Instead of laying it down and waiting until the musical form allows to move to the I, you could use these inner tensions to stepwise resolve. The sus4 (C) could resolve to the third (B) and the b9 (Ab) could resolve to the 1 (G) before moving to the next chord. This can be done one by one (which is the more effective way when you need to bridge time) or both together:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/g7sus4b9-stepwise/s-u8cVaP3jmVW

Of course, in this context of a rather positive and uplifting melody, this chord feels slightly out of place and drags the musical expression into a different direction than what it set up, so as mentioned before: context is everything.

If we ignore the d in the melody, the following options would be possible:

6-4 suspension

A slight extension to the sus4 chord is the 6-4 suspension which additionally to the 4 also includes the 6 (E)  that resolves downwards to the fifth:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/g6-4sus/s-PJXb0M7yHuj

You see I chose the chord symbol of C/G which is more or less the result you get when you replace the 3 and 5 of a G chord with a 4 and 6. This chord however needs its resolution to G before going to the tonic as otherwise there would litereally be no cadence of tension in this progression with just an inversion of C going to another C chord.

Particularly on the V side there are quite a few possibilities of added extensions to create more tension for the following resolution. 

7#9b13

The combination of #9 (A# or Bb) and b13 (Eb) is quite common and could also be called an altered chord as it is based on the altered scale (which I will cover in another post soon). It creates quite a strong dissonance:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/g79b13/s-BgZH0uW4nQG

In this context, this chord is only a theoretical option as it establishes a very different harmonic vocabulary for the moment of its presence. The rest of the chord progression consist of quite straight forward, rather simple chords. Introducing one chord with lots of tension notes feels like introducing a very complicated word in an otherwise very simple sentence. In order to make this chord plausible, one would need to "spice up" the surrounding chords accordingly. However, in such a context, this chord would work very well (yet, feel quite jazzy).

As long as your chord employs enough tension it doesn't technically need to be a dominant seventh chord.

maj7#5

For instance this chord would also work:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/gmaj75/s-bxohHD2K1j4

It is basically a B/G chord and again would be quite strange in this context but it serves a quite tenseful dominant feeling as well.

Linear Motion

Another way to make dominants that sustain for a while a bit more interesting is to create some linear motion that target towards the new chord. Depending on how quick you move there it could either feel like an embellished V (if done quickly) or like an inserted chord progression (when done slowly).

Here are two examples where the linear motion is focused on the bass line. One bridging the fourth from G to C upwards and one bridging from G to C downwards:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/g-linear-motion/s-cXcBvjLuLJB

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/g-linear-motion-2/s-7fRVLC6dNI6

These are just exemplary and exist in various forms but demonstrate the concept behind this idea. It might be debatable whether they are necessary in this particular chord progression as the dominant chord only sustains for half a note but in cases where you spend longer on the dominant it is definitely useful to try out such things.

So you can see that there are many different ways of making a V chord more interesting. Again, pay attention to the context and see those just as a starting point to experiment. The general idea should be that in such a (or basically any) harmonic context as a V-I there are several options to avoid lingering for too long on a static chord.

This is in fact one of the things I see most frequently in compositions by inexperienced composers. Just because you reach a bass note for a while doesn't mean that the chord above that bass note needs to remain static for that time. 

In the next part I will try to shed some light on the concept of tritone substitution which is another way to spice up your V.