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The major II chord gives music the power of flight.
If you've been taught that the ii chord is supposed to be minor, what's going on here?
Normally in a major key the second chord, or ii chord, is a minor triad.
But when composers make a small change and make it a major chord
the music gains a sense of power and lift.
And it's not just film composers who use this.
There are plenty of examples of the major II chords showing up in songs,
and whenever it does we get the same bright uplifting feeling.
So first of all, what this chord is not is a secondary dominant.
Check out the D7 here in Piano Man.
To go over it a little too quickly, because again it's not the point,
a secondary dominant is when you borrow the V chord or dominant from a different key.
So this D7 chord feels good going to G because it's actually the C chord of the key of G major.
It's not our main dominant but a secondary dominant.
One of my first ever YouTube videos was about Secondary Dominants so you can check
that out if you want because I know I went over that way too quickly here.
But again my point is that major II is not just the same thing as V of V.
The main reason is because of how it resolves and the direction of the chords.
V of V wants to resolve to five like it does in Piano Man.
But in our examples so far major II goes against that expectation,
and actually in almost all of the examples I found it moves to IV, like in Eight Days a Week.
So if it's not a secondary dominant, what is it?
The cleanest explanation is that it's a borrowed chord from the C Lydian mode.
What this means is that C major has a set of chords built up from the tones of the major scale.
If we change the mode to Lydian by raising the fourth scale degree,
in this case F to F#, we end up changing the chords too.
One of those changes is ii minor to II major.
We can mix and match the different chords from different modes
while still maintaining the same tonic or home pitch.
A D major chord might not be at home in C major
but it is at home in C Lydian and so it still makes sense to our ear.
Here's major II again in Forget You with the exact same chord progression as Eight Days a Week.
Also notice how the II major goes to IV.
I think my favorite example of a major II chord comes from Kelly Clarkson's Breakaway,
which I actually found using HookTheory's TheoryTab Database.
which has over 30,000 chord and melody analyses for popular songs you know and love.
And that database powers tons of resources on hooktheory.com, which is an educational
platform designed to make music theory accessible and practical for everyone.
If you're in need of a full rundown on music theory and how it works,
dive into two interactive books filled with popular music examples.
Train your ear to recognize chords with Chord Crush,
an interactive web app where you solve puzzles built with real songs,
and I actually made a whole video about how to use Chord Crush to learn to hear chord progressions.
And you can hone your songwriting skills with HookPad, a songwriting sketchpad.
HookPad's built in music theory engine makes smart suggestions in real time
so you can always find the next best note or chord before exporting to sheet music or MIDI.
HookTheory is a great resource for seasoned musicians and beginners alike.
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So in Kelly Clarkson's Breakaway the major II
gets used a bit differently than what we've seen so far.
Part of what makes it so effective is that the pattern of vi V IV has just been set up.
We have this in our ears. Our brains have registered this as an expected pattern.
So in the second time through she goes vi V II major,
the chord is surprising and feels even stronger and brighter than what we were expecting.
I say this all the time, but this is another example of how
major chords from outside your key sound more major.
Listen again and think about how, other than knowing what happens if you've heard the song
before, just based on the pattern you're probably expecting an F major chord in the fourth bar.
And we do end up getting that expected IV chord, it's just been delayed a bit.
Also interesting is how that major II chord comes right on the lyric
"Breakaway," which is the title of the song.
And then she goes right into the chorus where she says
"I'll spread my wings and I'll learn how to fly."
For those of you who've been waiting for my video on Dominant Multipolar Tonality,
surprise, this was it!
Or at least one of them, because the D major chord, besides coming from C Lydian,
is really at home in the dominant key of G major.
I think the specific effects of different
key relationships is an idea that's not fully explored with modal interchange.
If you want to learn more about how an obscure theory of Japanese anime
and video game music is inspiring these YouTube videos you don't want to miss this video here.
Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one!