Secondary Relative Minor

As far as I know, this is a term invented by the late great Joe Pass, which means the 'mediant' or iii chord. In C, that would be E minor. It can often substitute for the I chord because it has 2 notes in common with it.
C = C E G B & Em = E G B. So it will sound exactly the same as a rootless C maj7 ('C' EGB).

I think he might also extend the idea to include not just the iii chord but any chord 3 scale degrees higher than the chord you want to substitute. So chord vi (Am) could substitute for IV (F). I'm not sure how far he takes it though because that wouldn't always work well in every case. Chord ii (Dm) would be a poor substitute for chord vii (Bdim) although it's 3 degrees higher.

NoteBoat is a big Joe Pass fan, so I'm sure he'll expand/correct as necessary and be more deserving of all those blood sacrifices you 've prepared :D

I'll sacrifice half now, half when NoteBoat posts*. Sound like a deal?

I got that one from the Mel Bay Joe Pass chords book. Gah, why doesn't he just say mediant? I'd have known precisely what he meant then! Thanks for making that link for me, I was really puzzled as to how I was to derive a relative minor from the relative minor, and was totally missing what he meant. I'll be interested to hear Noteboat's expansion, especially on the use of other minor chords in this secondary minor context, but it's becoming clearer...

*I do, of course, mean sacrificing half the herd, and not half of each individual animal. Although the latter could make for an interesting philosophical conundrum...

A chromatic coterie? Let's cue up the legato llama!

Fretsource is right about Pass thinking this way. I think he looked at "secondary" minors the way you could look at secondary dominants - they're a fifth over the primary chord. So if your primary (relative) minor is Am, your secondary minor is a fifth higher (Em)... and he even talked in terms of tertiary minors (in this case Bm, a fifth above Em).

I'm not sure that's a very useful way to think of things. But a lot of brilliant jazz folks can get pretty esoteric in their language... someplace at home I've got a book called the jazz composer's companion, which has a bunch of essays by jazz composers - some of it reads like Carlos Casteneda and James Joyce decided to co-author a piece while blindfolded.

I guess as long as it means something to you, concepts like secondary minors work great. But it's not really part of generally accepted theory.

*I do, of course, mean sacrificing half the herd, and not half of each individual animal. Although the latter could make for an interesting philosophical conundrum...

I think Schrodinger did that with cats :)

A chromatic coterie? Let's cue up the legato llama!

Fretsource is right about Pass thinking this way. I think he looked at "secondary" minors the way you could look at secondary dominants - they're a fifth over the primary chord. So if your primary (relative) minor is Am, your secondary minor is a fifth higher (Em)... and he even talked in terms of tertiary minors (in this case Bm, a fifth above Em).

I'm not sure that's a very useful way to think of things. But a lot of brilliant jazz folks can get pretty esoteric in their language... someplace at home I've got a book called the jazz composer's companion, which has a bunch of essays by jazz composers - some of it reads like Carlos Casteneda and James Joyce decided to co-author a piece while blindfolded.

I guess as long as it means something to you, concepts like secondary minors work great. But it's not really part of generally accepted theory.

Sorry, I've got no legato llamas. :cry: My supplier of sacrifical sonically impaired sub-species doesn't stock them. But if you have the name of a good supplier, I'll put a rush order in. I trust you'd prefer free range legato llamas? Or are you happy with Contralto constrained ones? For now, we'll have to go with Bass with breathing problems (what? they've been out of water for nearly ten minutes now! - makes note of Bream for use in similar reference when the next Q throws itself up...).

I got it from the Mel Bay Joe Pass Guitar Style book (uh, the 'secondary rel. minor'' term, not the Bass with breathing problems). It's a good text given that I know enough theory to make sense of most of it, but if you don't "get" something there's very little in the way of explanation. So secondary relative minors are a Joe Pass "thing" and only really get referrred to by him and people who've studied his method? Cool.

Now, just to make sure I'm absolutely clear on secondary dominants. I learned about these from an Eric Roche text. He says secondary dominants are seventh chords built each note of the scale. So, in C major, the secondary dominant chords would be:

C7 D7 E7 F7 G7 A7 B7

I'm good with that. Then, he says that each secondary dominant in our example resolves to a chord in the key of C - e.g. A7 resolves to Dm. Also good with that. Using them as chord substitutions, you're basically creating a V7-I (or V7-i) by placing the secondary dominant before the chord it resolves to; a perfect cadence. So, a secondary dominant A7 would be considered chord V of ii in the A7-Dm example we're using here. I'm happy with all of that. Only...F7 resolves to Bb. :? Bb isn't a chord in the key of C. So, how do we explain the F7 chord as a secondary dominant in this example? Or is this a typo/error in the book I'm using? Or morning busy doing other stuff plankishness in me?

Also, you're description of secondary dominants seems to differ with that of the Roche text. I initially assumed a secondary dominant was a "dominant of the dominant" so in C, the dominant is G7, and the dominant of G is D7, so the secondary dominant in C would be D7. Of course, you can work through all the dominant chords laid out in the C major example above as "dominant of the dominant of the dominant" and so on. Until you get to the pernickety F7. Again. And wouldn't this way of thinking mean that you'd have to call D7 a tertiary dominant, and so on, until you have named all the dominant chords? Which is the more accurate/useful way of thinking and talking about secondary dominants? I get that you're both essentially saying the same thing, but in possibly different ways, but I'm interested in why you might think/talk about it differently is all. Thanks!

*I do, of course, mean sacrificing half the herd, and not half of each individual animal. Although the latter could make for an interesting philosophical conundrum...

I think Schrodinger did that with cats :)

Man, I love this forum. I never really expected that reference to get picked up. :wink:

p.s. thanks NoteBoat for doing the chord substitutions article a while back - I'm gonna print it a pop it in my JP text as reference. It covered a lot of stuff I'm familiar with, and some bits I wasn't quite so familiar with, but all in all a really good reference to have to hand. Props.

A lot of people misuse the term "secondary dominant" - almost all of them are guitarists (go figure).

For the last five centuries or so, classical music has made use of modulation - changes to a new key. Modulations are so common they're a standard part of many forms - the second subject of a sonata is in the key of the dominant, etc. So composers were used to using "outside" chords, and resolving them to what were essentially pivot chords - those occuring in both keys (the I of the new key, or the V of the old). And those are nice and easy for form & analysis teachers to mark off (mm. 38-63 are in the key of D...)

But sometimes a composer left the key only briefly, for as little as a beat or two. Since that's not enough time to establish a sense of key - essentially the same problem I have with guitarists talking about using mode x over chord y - it doesn't feel like a modulation. They were called "transient modulations" up until the 1940s, when Piston came up with the idea of secondary dominants.

Dominant chords want to resolve down a fifth. They can resolve to any type of chord - you can go from E7 to A, or E7 to Am, or E7 to A7. Piston saw the E7 as a V chord, even if it wasn't the V in the key. So if you're in the key of D, and you have E7 -> A, the E7 is the V/IV - the dominant of the IV chord... which is a secondary dominant in the key of D. If you were in the key of G, E7->Am would be the V/ii. In that context, the secondary dominants in the key of C are:

A7 (V/ii) B7 (V/iii) C7 (V/IV) D7 (V/V) E7 (V/vi) F#7 (V/vii)

G7 is never a secondary dominant in the key of C - it's the[/ib] dominant. And F7 isn't a secondary dominant in C either, because as you noted it resolves to a Bb root.

Free range is good. I could never get the bass to breath properly either - once you get 'em on the dock they all seem to get asthmatic.

Awesome, I feel completely clear on these now!

A lot of people misuse the term "secondary dominant" - almost all of them are guitarists (go figure).

Hence my reluctance to try learning anything about theory from guitar books. But I find using large doses of salt helps keep the pages open when doing so. :roll: