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The subdominant chord is one of the most important chords in music theory. Very often it gives us amusicians fantastic opportunities to create really rich, meaningful sounds when we’re composing, songwriting or improvising at the piano or any other harmonic instrument.

So in this tutorial I take a close look at what the subdominant chord is, the effect it has and what you can do with it to make your music richer and more interesting. This includes thinking about subdominant chord extensions and substitutions, and also how we can use different voicings and inversions of the subdominant chord to create different effects. I also go through the essential music theory involved in how the main chords of a song work, and how they relate to each other – including an overview of the functions of the tonic and dominant chords, as well as the subdominant. There’s also a brief look at cadences and how they work, including the authentic cadence and the plagal cadence, as well as how the plagal cadence (also known as the “church cadence” or the “amen cadence”) — which is massively popular in pop music — evolved from church music.

You’ll find this tutorial useful if you're an improvising piano player looking to improve your skills, and also if you want to develop your basic music theory and composition knowledge for projects involving songwriting and music production.

MY BOOKS
How To Really Play The Piano: www.billspianopages.com/how-to-really
Seven Studies in Pop Piano: https://www.billspianopages.com/seven-studies
An Introduction To Cocktail Piano: https://www.billspianopages.com/cocktail

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