Making V-I More Interesting Part 3: The I Side

In the last two parts of this tutorial we were looking at different ways how to make the dominant side of a V-I cadence musically more interesting employing several strategies to substitute or harmonically enrich the dominant chord. In this part however, we're going to have a look at what ways there are to make the resolving side of this progression musically more interesting.

We have to differentiate between two fundamental approaches here. The first strategy would be to avoid going to the I all together and substitute it by another chord effectively making it into a deceptive cadence (deceptive in the word meaning, not in the more strict music theory meaning). The second strategy would be to delay the I by inserting one or more steps between the V and the I but eventually getting there. While this way doesn't alter the fundamental musical form compared to the orignal V-I, the first way of course does. Changing the target chord of a V-I into a different chord will naturally change the harmonic path of the music so this is nothing that you can apply easily as a quick reharmonisation but it will most likely also interfer with the melody on top.
So the starting point would be this ii-V-I which could also be a V-I but for the sake of a bit more harmonic context I used this one:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/ii-v-i/s-WC6Hr3kTNRn

Let's first start with a few ways how to replace the target with a new chord:

Deceptive Cadence

A classical way to resolve the cadence would be by going to the relative minor of the tonic. This is classically known as "deceptive cadence".

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/ii-v-vi/s-DPaXRIO8nVL
This is of course not particularly spectacular and surprising but works really effective in some cases and is relatively close to the function of the original progression. Here are a few more examples from the literature with more context.

Backdoor V-I

A backdoor V-I is a term coming from Jazz Harmony and describes a progression that after the dominant chord resolves to a chord a major second and not a perfect fourth higher:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/iv-bvii7-i/s-aN4Da7opCqd

Effectively, if we look at that target chord as the new tonic, the chords before that wouldn't be a ii and a V7 but rather a iv and bVII7.

That progression works rather satisfactory as the bVII chord shares two common notes with the V chord as seen here (transposed in both cases to the tonic of G to compare):

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/iv-bvii7-i-comparison/s-ruMoOmjvA0p

Depending on how you look at it this could of course also be a substitution for the V side of a cadence as seen in the example above. A little more information on this progression here.
Effectively you could use any chord that is NOT the target I and not the V of a V-I as  a surprise moment and avoid the expectable V-I. How successful this works is depending on how well you connect it and but of course also whether there is a possible connection at all. Favourable are target chords that share at least one note with the V chord such as:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/alternative-targets/s-GReUdSgMpsq

In any case, the result will be ideally pleasantly surprising but of course shift tonality at least temporarily away from your original key so there is an inherent danger of losing structural integrity of the piece or getting harmonically lost in your own piece.

An easier way to create some interest is to delay the arrival at the I. The strategy to achieve that would be to insert additional chords between the V and the I which comes with a few consequences. It might be tricky to squeeze more chords into a formal section of your piece without sacrificing formal orientation. You can try to make them fit by accelerating the harmonic rhythm (the frequency at which you change chords) however that might just become overwhelming. So the most prominent use of such strategies are final V-Is of a piece or at least a section. It might also be possible to structurally squeeze in the extra chords rather on the V side than the I side of the progression.

There are several ways to avoid going straight for the I which in themselves already have become clichés again but nevertheless work very well in some cases. Whether they work of course is also dependig on your melody note. Here are the most common ones that presume the root note as melody note sustaining over the target chord:

bIImaj7 -I

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/biimaj7-i/s-LcDdu30bRvU

The note G as target connects the Abmaj7 to the G chord which makes this progression rather smooth.

(bVI)-bVII-I

An approach that is partially related to the above mentioned backdoor V-I. The first half shows the insertion of the bVII chord (in our case an F) with an added ninth to include the root note of the tonic chord in this chord. The second half shows an extension of this with adding the bVI chord before the bVII chord. This chord is very similar to the vi chord (Cm7) which is used in the above mentioned backdoor ii-V-I and which could also stand in for the Ebmaj7 that is used here making this effectively two chained ii-V's (one "frontdoor" and one backdoor) towards the tonic.

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/bvi-bvii-i/s-c6nvlzwooqU
*not great voicing on the second F(add9) chord but you get the idea.

IV-(I6-ii7)-I

A more diatonic approach would be to insert the subdominant. There are several cliché progressions that extend on that one, for instance the one in the second part:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/iv-i6-ii7-i/s-Vh6NpSJHSMJ

i6-IV-I

Another alternative that involves the subdominant is to join it with the minor tonic with the third in the bass or the bIII chord (in our chase Bb):

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/i6-iv-i/s-fuq4tWk4uS4

Those are just a few rather common ones. As I said above these work best when the melody sustains on the root note. If your melody does something else you might need to find other progressions. The great thing with this is that you can become really creative. Almost anything will work in such a context depending on the surrounding context and how skillfully you employ it.

The bottom line here should be to take all the examples above (and also from the last two parts) into your "musical vocabulary" but not necessarily reproduce them on every ocassion. The more important point to take away from this is to get a broader understanding of structural harmonic pillars (like V and I), their function and ways to embellish or substitute those. Next time you reach a final tonic, maybe ask yourself whether there is some sort of intersting harmonic move that you could employ to make it a bit more interesting rather than just going for the most obvious solution.