Uploaded November 2011 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
Quick video from the beach in Florida to help distinguish between the vii°7 and V6-5 chords. They both have ti re fa. But the V6-5 also has a sol and you'll hear sol-sol in a cadence to i. (since I often use "so" interchangeably with "sol", you can remember that a V6-5 to i combination is just so-so...)
The vii°7 has le instead of sol. This gives a little additional pull of le to sol as it moves to a i chord. It sometimes sounds spooky, so it might help you to remember that it is "sol-less"
Since the vii°7 is composed of stacked minor thirds, it is the one chord we can't really play "find the fourth" or "find the second" with to find the root. In fact, the root of a vii°7 is entirely based on the chord it resolves to... but we'll learn more about that next semester. For now, it will be resolving to i.
Quick video from the beach in Florida to help distinguish between the vii°7 and V6-5 chords. They both have ti re fa. But the V6-5 also has a sol and you'll hear sol-sol in a cadence to i. (since I often use "so" interchangeably with "sol", you can remember that a V6-5 to i combination is just so-so...)
The vii°7 has le instead of sol. This gives a little additional pull of le to sol as it moves to a i chord. It sometimes sounds spooky, so it might help you to remember that it is "sol-less"
Since the vii°7 is composed of stacked minor thirds, it is the one chord we can't really play "find the fourth" or "find the second" with to find the root. In fact, the root of a vii°7 is entirely based on the chord it resolves to... but we'll learn more about that next semester. For now, it will be resolving to i.
