I meant the song, but that is also great you're writing books. Unfortunately I have no idea how to read music and even have little patience for tab, but hey, we got to bump and old thread and get your book some publicity.
I think we were talking about Pink Floyd/theory in another thread, which is why this one got recommended to me. You mentioned Brain Damage being in D with the G7 being a secondary dominant/non resolving type, but isn't that an oxymoron? i.e. to be a secondary 'dominant' you need a V-I? G7-D would be a IV7-I, right? So how is that considered a non-resolving secondary dominant?
I feel like they just wanted to setup the chorus (which introduces the C chord) by getting our ear used to a note from that key -- by playing the G7 with the F note we're yearning for C, and we get it later in the song during the chorus. No? I also feel the D to G7 in Brain Damage only works because of the pulse of that song. If you play D-G7 with almost any other rhythm/pulse it sounds bad. I'm rambling a bit, but since it looks like you wrote books on theory I'm curious to hear your thoughts on all that.
The term non-resolving is simply referring to the fact that the chord isn't behaving as expected. When we hear a dominant seventh chord, we naturally want to hear that chord resolve down a 5th or up a 4th--same thing. (The blues are one exception to this.) So, as you said, when we hear G7, we want to hear a C chord. Since G7 is the dominant of C---not D---it's called a secondary dominant, because it's briefly tonicizing another note. But since it doesn't resolve to C in the verse, it's known as a non-resolving secondary dominant.
It's kind of like when the V chord of a key is followed by the vi chord, it's called a
deceptive resolution. It doesn't change the fact that it's a dominant chord; it's just an analysis after the fact.
So ... the first time we hear G7 in a song that's in the key of D, it could be called a secondary dominant. But if it doesn't resolve down a 5th, it then becomes a non-resolving secondary dominant.
You could also just call it a IV7, as you mentioned, which is more of a common chart-writing style. But in classical analysis, it would be called "V/bVII" (read "five of flat seven")---in other words, "the dominant chord of the key of C." Both analyses would mean the same thing.
Analysis is always an "after-the-fact" thing. I doubt Floyd were thinking of G7 as a secondary dominant, much less a non-resolving one, when they wrote the song, but that's technically the correct theory analysis.
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I've heard a lot of covers of this solo, I think you have done very well to deliver a very similar feel to the original in your playing. I suspect you've lived a little.
Thanks very much!
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Well done on the book!
I havnt actually heard the audio, I'm on the mobile version of the site. Im sure it's good, but congrats on the book. That's a big deal!
Thumbs up!
Thanks a lot. I appreciate it.
