Inactive Tutor answered • 6d
An augmented chord almost always implies a dominant 7th chord but with a raised 5th. The sound of an augmented chord has a certain lift to it that creates more tension than a normal dominant 7th chord.The structure of an augmented dominant 7th comes from two places-either one of the various types of minor keys which it is resolving to as a dominant five chord resolution, -or-from the wholetone scale.Since the augmented chord is made up of consecutive whole steps- Root, major 3rd, augmented 5th, flat 7th. there is an appliccable scale made up entirely of whole steps. This sound has real lift and creates a senseof floating until the chord finally resolves. This is really fun to play around with. Listen to old movie scores and French composer Claude Debussy for ideas. But also jazz musicians use it regularly on a dominant chord particularly when resolving to a minor chord. Try it out on the last chord of the classic Gershwin song "Summertime".
If you are a composer and want to fool the ear- use a dominant 7th augmented chord to resolve to a major chord. Example- in the key of Cmajor- G7aug to resolve to C major. The ear expects Cminor because of that Dsharp note, but you end up with three half step resolutions within that one cadence. F(the 7th) goes to E, B (the 3rd) goes to C, Dsharp(the aug 5th) goes to E.
These are just the most common ways of using an augmented chord. Try playing with an augmented major 7th chord as well. Listen closely to where it wants to go. That augmented 5th generally wants to resolve up a half step. Cma7#5 resolving to anything with an A in the chord will work!
