Woodwinds Practice Dominant Chords Around the Circle of Fifths

All musicians need to become familiar with chords and chord progressions. The most common chord progression is a dominant seventh chord moving to a chord a fifth lower. In the key of C Major, this would be a G⁷ chord going to the C chord. For the chords to progress around the circle of fifths, the C⁷ chord is played instead of a C major, and it will in turn go to an F⁷ chord. This continues until the musician return to the G⁷ chord. So far, this applies to all musical instruments. For an explanation of how chords are formed, see the article The Theory of Musical Chords for Melodic Instruments (Ronald Miller, AssociatedContent.com). The dominant chord is sometimes called a 5 chord, since it is built starting on the 5^th step of the scale. In the key of C, it would start on G and consist of G, B, D, and F.

After learning the basic three note major chord (called a triad), the next step is to learn the dominant chords. The triads are written for woodwinds (clarinet, sax, and flute) at Major Chords Around the Circle of Fifths (Ronald Miller, AssociatedContent.com). In the images above, I have written the dominant 7^th chords for clarinet, saxophone, and flute. Each is in a different image at the top of this article.

In each exercise, the chord is written for the full practical range of the instrument. There is no time signature, since the number of notes for the full range of each chord varies. Each chord starts on the name note of the chord. The first chord is G⁷, which is the dominant chord for the key of C. It starts on the lowest G on the instrument, and is played to the top and bottom of the instrument before returning to the name note (G). The rhythm will be filled out with a few notes to take the musician to the next chord which will begin in a new measure.

To practice these chords, first play each measure and chord by itself until you are fluent. Play legato and try to play without any intervening notes caused by slow fingers which are not coordinated. Then play the entire exercise. Try different combinations of legato and staccato. The ear is key to detecting any wrong notes. It is very confusing trying to follow the key signatures as they change, but the ear will guide you through.