Help with chords

[pianomankris]

I'm referring to a pure vii. Any examples? Vii sounds almost non-melodious to me. xD

But I do appreciate Vii B and Vb.

In pop music anyway, the bassist will normally just play the V when the chord is the vii (not always, but usually).

In C, this would be a G bass over a bdim (B D F), which gives the overall tonality of a V7 chord (G B D F, which = G7).

Which works fine, as this is comonly resolved to the I; so, in theory, by the bass player playing the V, a perfect cadence has been created. Even though the chord is, in theory, a vii chord.


futures mentions this in his chord usage/family chart.

[Cheez]

I'm referring to a pure vii. Any examples? Vii sounds almost non-melodious to me. xD

But I do appreciate Vii B and Vb.

"Pure vii" is vii dim (in the key of C, it will be B, D, F, which is a diminished chord). One usage is the example I gave.

OK. A longer example of something in context (something very quick and off my head):

IVmaj7 - - - | V/IV - - -| iii7 - - -| vi7 - - - |ii7 - - -| V - - -| Imaj7 - - -| - - - -|
vii dim - - -| III - - - | vi - vi7/V - | #IVhalfdim7 - - - |
ii7 - - - |IV/V - - - | C9 - - - |


Oh, a reminder to all. CAPITAL letters = major chords (I, II, III, IV, V etc) , SMALL letters = minor chords (i, ii, iii, iv, v etc).

Pianomankris, I would think a bass of V over a viidim is still a V7 chord, would it not? It won't sound like a vii dim. A vii dim still require the bassist to play a vii, which is not uncommon even in pop music. Am I right?

[pianomankris]

Pianomankris, I would think a bass of V over a viidim is still a V7 chord, would it not? It won't sound like a vii dim. A vii dim still require the bassist to play a vii, which is not uncommon even in pop music. Am I right?

Yip you're spot on, Cheez

What I mean is that a lot of the time (well, for some of the bassists I know lol), when they see the vii chord, they will play the V bass, which does, of course, change the chord into a V7, even though some of the other band members can be thinking vii. Like I said though, this only really happens in pop, as in jazz (as you'll know, Cheez), each chord type is used specifically for the coloration it provides.

Playing the V bass is a good 'emergency' shortcut if the rhythm section is playing the vii chord. But like Cheez says, by strict usage, it would be a false understanding of the vii. It is handy though, and since this thread is considering the basics of using harmony, this is normally (in pop anyway) how the vii is treated when learning how to use it to begin with.


I think too many people get bogged down with harmony when writing a song - or - probably what happens most often - they think the harmony is the primary part that defines the song (i'm not saying it isn't, but there's a lot more to song writing than melody/harmony). I'm going to start a few new threads on pop songwriting that'll hopefully open doors for some.

Oh - warning to some - I may be stating some 'rules' lol.