Jazz Piano Tutorial - Secondary Chords and Tonicisation

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This Jazz Piano Tutorial is about secondary chords and tonicisation.

Tonicisation is process of temporarily making a non-tonic chord sound like the tonic, just for a moment. It's like changing key for a very short period of time. The only difference between modulation and tonicisation is the time period. Tonicisation is short (a couple bars at most) while modulation is long (no less than 2 bars or a phrase).

There are two ways to 'tonicise' a chord, that is by inserting either a:
a) Secondary Dominant; or
b) Secondary Leading-tone Chord
before the chord you are trying to 'tonicise'.

Both these chord act like a 'secondary dominant function' which makes it sound like your temporarily changed key.

This is done to give a chord progression more harmonic complexity and provide a stronger pull to the resolving chord (through a semitone movement of the leading note to the tonic).

Below is a quick recap of the chord progressions covered in the video lesson.

Chord Progression
CMaj7 | Am7 | Dm7 | G7

Secondary Dominant
CMaj7 | A7 | Dm7 | G7

Secondary Leading-Tone Chord
CMaj7 | C#dim7 | Dm7 | G7

Secondary Dominant going to Em
CMaj7 B7 | Em7

Cycling Secondary Dominant
CMaj7 B7 | Em7 A7 | Dm7 G7 | CMaj7

Cycling Secondary Dominant without resolving
CMaj7 B7 | E7 A7 | D7 G7 | CMaj7

Secondary ii, V
CMaj7 | Em7 A7 | Dm7 | G7

Chromatic Cycling Secondary ii, V
Em7 A7 | Ebm7 Ab7 | Dm7 | G7

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