Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The fourth tone of a diatonic scale, next below the dominant.
- adjective Zoology Less than dominant; ranking below one that is dominant.
- adjective Ecology Prevalent in a community but below the dominant in importance. Used of a species.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In music, the tone next below the dominant in a scale; the fourth, as D in the scale of A: also used adjectively. See diagram under circle.
- Subordinate; sub-maximal or subnormal: said specifically of the stimuli which evoke marginal or obscure mental processes.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Mus.) The fourth tone above, or fifth below, the tonic; -- so called as being under the dominant.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun music The fourth tone of a scale.
- noun music The
triad built on the subdominant tone.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun (music) the fourth note of the diatonic scale
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The IV chord, also called the subdominant, is a chord built on the fourth tone of the scale, in our example, a B-flat.
Rural Blues:Structure And Development In The Post-Civil War South Bluesman Harry 1998
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"Epiphany" is pretty extravagantly lovely for a hymn; check out those strong-beat double non-harmonic tones in the third bar, like cheese melting onto the sirloin burger of subdominant substitutions.
Star Search Matthew Guerrieri 2009
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That afternoon, I ... ... staked a subdominant buck decoy about 15 yards off the stand in a small opening in the otherwise thick hedge pasture, then climbed up to my perch.
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That afternoon, I ... ... staked a subdominant buck decoy about 15 yards off the stand in a small opening in the otherwise thick hedge pasture, then climbed up to my perch.
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"Epiphany" is pretty extravagantly lovely for a hymn; check out those strong-beat double non-harmonic tones in the third bar, like cheese melting onto the sirloin burger of subdominant substitutions.
Archive 2009-01-01 Matthew Guerrieri 2009
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It's far closer to the language of Tristan — or, in a way, the epic E-flat-major triad that opens Das Rheingold (which, when it finally does move, goes to the not to the dominant but the subdominant — where Wolf and Puccini start).
Honor among thieves Matthew Guerrieri 2008
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In the recent Berkshire Hathaway merger with BNSF railroad, Berkshire was the dominant company and BNSF the subdominant one.
Warren Buffett and the Art of Stock Arbitrage Mary Buffett 2010
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The other business, the subdominant company, is folded into the dominant company.
Warren Buffett and the Art of Stock Arbitrage Mary Buffett 2010
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The core of his argument concerns the relationships of keys to each other, the establishment of a tonal centre, the sequence of tonic, dominant, subdominant.
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It's far closer to the language of Tristan — or, in a way, the epic E-flat-major triad that opens Das Rheingold (which, when it finally does move, goes to the not to the dominant but the subdominant — where Wolf and Puccini start).
Archive 2008-04-01 Matthew Guerrieri 2008
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