Tonic, Super-Tonic, Mediant, Sub-Dominant, Dominant, Sub-Mediant Chords

Good morning. This is Duane and today I’d like to cover a little music theory, that is of scale degrees such as Tonic, Super-Tonic, Mediant, Sub-Dominant, Dominant, Sub-Mediant Chords. Scale degrees are very important to understand because all of music is made out of those scale degrees. In other words, this is a raw material. If you’re playing in the key of C, that’s the raw material of all the songs you’ll ever play in the key of C.

If you’re playing in the D, that’s the raw material of all the songs you’ll ever play in the key of D. No matter what key you play in, and there’s 12 separate major keys.

First, let’s define a major scale, a major key. It’s formed out of a whole step, a whole step and a half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step. You can see that clearly when you start on C because there’s a black note, a black key between C and D. That’s a whole step, that’s whole step, but that’s a half step, there’s nothing in there but a crack, right? Whole step, whole step, whole step, half step. That’s the formula for a Major scale. Whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half. Two wholes and a half, three wholes and a half, you got that? Okay.

Once you know the scale of the key you’re going to play in, and we’re just going to pick on C first of all, then you need to learn the scale degrees. The chord bill on the first degree of scale is a called a tonic chord. Tonic means home base. It’s the main thing. It’s where you usually start it in, not always, but you certainly use it more than any other chord in the key of C.

The chord build on the second degree of scale, just using scale notes, is called the supertonic chord, super meaning above. Mediant chord, mediant middle. The chord built on the third degree of scale is called mediant.

The fourth degree of the scale is called a subdominant. The fifth degree of scale is called dominant, so that’s dominant. That’s subdominant. That’s submediant, submediant. That’s leading tone, and then you come back to tonic.

There’s eight scale degrees, actually seven different ones, and then the tonic is repeated of course. Among those various chords that I just played, three are more prominent than any others. They’re called primary chords. Those are the 1 chord, the 4 chord, and the 5 chord. That’s true in any key.

They’re the home base chords. They’re the chords you use more than any others because they’re the only major chords in that particular key. So 1, 4, and 5 are the chords you want to learn first but then once you learn the primary chords, 1, 4, and 5, then you want to learn the secondary chords. 2, the supertonic; 3, the mediant, submediant is the 6th, and the leading tone is used the least.

That’s easy to see in the key of C. Let’s say we’re in the key of B. The key of B, we can’t, that’s not a B major scale because it doesn’t follow the rule of wholes and half steps. We have to go up a whole step from B and that would take us to C-sharp. By the way, we couldn’t call that D-flat. Why not? Because otherwise we’d be skipping the C entirely, wouldn’t we? It’s B, C-sharp, D-sharp, E, F-sharp, G-sharp, A-sharp, and B. People wonder why black keys are sometimes called sharps, sometimes flats. It depends how they’re used.

If you’re in the key of D-flat, then D-flat is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, based on that same formula of major scales. The 1 chord in the key of D-flat is D-flat, isn’t it? The 4 chord is G-flat and the 5 chord is A-flat. 1, 4, and 5. If I play in the key of D-flat, the chords I’ll use most are the 1 chord, the 4 chord, and the 5 chord. Usually I’ll end on the 1 chord, not always but a lot of songs. Excuse me, but a lot of songs do that.

What you need to do is go through all 12 keys and figure out first of all the primary chords, then the secondary chords. It wouldn’t hurt if you learned those names: tonic, supertonic, mediant, subdominant, dominant, submediant, leading tone, and tonic, because you’ll run into those in theory books and various situations as you play the piano and do other things in music.

That’s it for today. We’ll take it a little further tomorrow because I want to discuss some things relevant to that, but that’s it for today. If you enjoyed this kind of thing, come on over to PlayPiano.com and sign up for free piano tips because they’re free and they’re tips that’ll help you down the road. Thanks. See you tomorrow. Bye-bye for now.

***For lots more good stuff on piano playing come on over to my website at https://www.playpiano.com and sign up for our free piano tips – “Exciting Piano Chords & Sizzling Chord Progressions!”

Here’s a great little book on chords and chord progressions on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Piano-Chords-Chord-Progressions-Exciting-ebook/dp/B0076OUGDE/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404158669&sr=1-1&keywords=piano+chords+duane+shinn

You’ll learn piano chords galore and how to apply them when you play piano – major chords, minor chords, augmented chords, diminished chords, 6th chords, 7th chords, 9th chords, 11th chords, 13th chords, suspensions, alterations and more. Chords are the “missing link” in most piano lessons and you can learn them all easily. Learn piano playing and music theory at the same time – it will make your progress faster and you will understand music like you never have before.

Here is the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9igq5FBKrQU&feature=youtu.be

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