# Understanding keys and how to write chord progressions



## QuantumCybin (Jun 22, 2013)

Hey all, so i've been a guitar player for about five years. My technical skills are just fine; I never have any difficulty learning a piece of music, but in the last year or so I have acquired a much bigger interest in actually writing music. Understanding key signatures, how notes gravitate towards the root, and how to apply those understandings to writing chord progressions.

I've tried doing research for a while using the internet, yet when I try to write anything, I often get stuck. I'll write a three or four chord progression and be happy with how that sounds....then that's it. I'm stuck as to where that riff could go because I don't truly get WHY that progression sounds good, and because of that, I can't manipulate the sound to my particular liking.

I came to sevenstring because of my big interest in metal and extended range guitar music. Periphery, Veil of Maya, Animals as Leaders, The Faceless, Volumes, The Contortionist, Meshuggah....just to name a few of the metal bands I enjoy.

Besides metal I really like old school shit too, like Rush and Zeppelin, also Allan Holdsworth...but anyway guys, can anyone help me get on the road to figuring out all this theory stuff? I'll answer questions if I wasn't being specific enough, as I know that's often a problem with music theory questions!


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Jun 22, 2013)

Welcome to the site. There is a lot of fundamental information out there for you to learn, so rather than giving it all to you here at once, I'll point you toward a decent site for learning the basics: musictheory.net

Stefan Kostka and Dorothy Payne's Tonal Harmony is an excellent reference for basic Western music theory.

You might also look into Sandy Feldstein's book, Practical Theory Complete. I'm not crazy about the book's content, but it's meant for self-teaching and I generally like its approach. If you PM me, I can furnish you with a PDF copy, or it looks like you can get it pretty cheap online.



QuantumCybin said:


> Hey all, so i've been a guitar player for about five years. My technical skills are just fine; I never have any difficulty learning a piece of music, but in the last year or so I have acquired a much bigger interest in actually writing music. Understanding key signatures, how notes gravitate towards the root, and how to apply those understandings to writing chord progressions.



Before going any further, I want to address the word "root". When we say "root", we are referring to the note that a chord is named after. For example, the root of A7 is A. The root of B&#9837;m is B&#9837;. The root of F#°7/A is F#. Root always indicates the letter-note name of a chord. However, because not all musicians are educated in these naming conventions, "root" is often used in contexts where the term is not appropriate. Somebody might say "the root of the key of D minor is D"; this is a case where "root" is incorrect. Keys don't have roots, chords do. If you want to sound like you know what you're talking about, you'd say "the tonic of the key of D minor is D". "Tonic" is the term for the note that a key (and tentatively, a scale) is named after. So, B phrygian's tonic is B. C# minor's tonic is C#.

The reason we do this is because "tonic" is a philosophical idea. As you put it, where notes gravitate toward. Also, a key will contain many chords, and therefore many roots. In a chord progression like this...

C G/B F/A C/G G7 C

... the roots of the chords are, in order, C G F C G C. But all of those chords exist in the key of C major, so C is the big mama tonic, and the other notes are subordinate to the tonic. (So you know, the other notes of the key have names, too. G in the key of C is called the "dominant", and F is the "subdominant", and there are others. Like "tonic", these names all connote certain roles. We can get to all the names some other time.)



> I've tried doing research for a while using the internet, yet when I try to write anything, I often get stuck. I'll write a three or four chord progression and be happy with how that sounds....then that's it. I'm stuck as to where that riff could go because I don't truly get WHY that progression sounds good, and because of that, I can't manipulate the sound to my particular liking.


Coming up with ideas and knowing how to link ideas together is a hurdle that we all get stuck on at some point, especially in the beginning. This is something that requires our development as composers to overcome. I'm not going to talk about where to go from what you've started yet, because I want to give my input on some matters that I think are important to retain.

Music is a language, but not one that functions like our spoken language. It would be very difficult to tell your roommate that it's his turn to clean the bathroom this week in music. If my dentist calls me and plays some music into the phone, I'm not going to understand that I have a checkup scheduled for 2:00 PM on Thursday. Music's language expresses more abstract notions, things that don't come across as well in words. If you want to say "life is tough", music is a great way to get that across. "I'm in love and it feels indescribably good" is another statement that music can convey convincingly. But to start conveying such messages you need to have a vocabulary, as well as a way to put the words together.

Our harmonic vocabulary operates on a fairly simple dichotomy: dissonance versus consonance. Dissonance is, by popular definition, something "ugly", something that doesn't agree. Consonance, quite the opposite, is "pretty", somewhere you want to be. This is a very simplified take on the terminology, and not a position that I personally take, but it gets the point across. Really, it's more like a yin-yang situation, where consonance and dissonance exist as complementary forces. We strive for consonance, but always by passing through dissonance. If you play a chord like this...


```
e-
b-
G-7
D-6
A-8
E-7
```
... that's pretty tense, pretty dark sounding. But if you play this chord right after it...


```
e-
b-
G-6
D-7
A-7
E-5
```
... suddenly, the tension disappears. I wouldn't want one all the time, because the consonant one is too boring and the dissonant one sounds like it wants to go somewhere, but by weighing them against each other you can get some satisfactory results. And by strategically picking where these consonances and dissonances go, you can tell a story.

Really quickly, listen to the first eight seconds of the French national anthem here:

Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle - Le Marsaillaise


Sounds patriotic, triumphant, uplifting. Positive words. For a national anthem, you'd hope it would sound that way. Now skip to 0:55 on this video:



It's a quote of the same anthem, but instead of being completed in its usual triumphant manner, it goes off in an unexpected direction that changes the music's meaning to something much darker. That unexpected chord at 1:03 should have been the tonic chord, a consonance, but is instead replaced with a dissonance.

What I am trying to do with this example is show you the power of harmony. We live in a society where musicians think that the way you write a song is by picking a few chords and then slapping a melody over it. It kind of works, but the result is frequently pedantic. Repeating the same four chords four times in a row is a rather robotic way to write a section of music. Harmony needs to breathe, and it can evolve while it is going along. Pick chords to fit the mood, pick chords that tell a story. Pick chords that are either consonant or dissonant, expected or unexpected, depending on what the music calls for.


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## QuantumCybin (Jun 22, 2013)

Wow, thank you so much for the introduction and examples. Those are all concerns and questions I have; how do musicians learn and manipulate sound to get a reaction out of people?

I'm going to take a look at the website you suggested. Is it okay if I send you a message now and again if I have a question? You've done an awesome job.


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## nicktao (Jun 22, 2013)

This is probably insignificant after that post but learning Haunted Shores, AAL, Periphery and similar bands' songs improved my chord progressions and overall song writing ten fold.


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## QuantumCybin (Jun 22, 2013)

All information I can gather is welcome, so please tell me anything that has helped you develop with writing. I'm at work while writing this but I'm going to be looking at the theory website.

Couple of questions also: I understand what intervals are, and I understand the layout of how major scales are built...but it just seems so overwhelming as to how all of these tools can be used to help me write music. 

I have a very hard time grasping the concept of "these notes belong to this key, so possible chords in this key are blank, blank, and blank". It's probably because I don't have any formal training! I'm taking a couple theory classes at my college here next semester.


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## wespaul (Jun 22, 2013)

Man, you can get really crazy with chord progressions, and how to modulate into different keys. Then you have the jazz stuff where rules are broken all over the place. SW has a great post, but it's really hard to distill this topic into a post or two (like he even states). 

If you're serious about the topic, see about taking a couple music theory classes at your local college, like you plan to. The Tonal Harmony book SW mentioned was used when I took my 4 theory classes. It's a pretty dry book, but has a lot of examples and answers to check yourself.


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## QuantumCybin (Jun 22, 2013)

Yeah, that's what makes it frustrating in one sense but awesome in another: there's so much material to cover, it's endless! I'll have to check that book out and yeah starting in the fall I'm taking a couple classes. I am serious about learning now, much more than I was. I know it's impossible to answer simply. I just want to be able to actually create the sounds that I hear in my head without getting stuck after 20 minutes of writing!


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## Solodini (Jun 24, 2013)

As SW mentioned, it's much akin to learning a language. Much of music is about context. While it's not particularly articulate as a language it shares many traits. For instance, an interval can change its implied meaning by context just like how the word "bad" changes meaning when you say "not bad" or "I want it badly". 

I think learning to voice lead will help you in your understanding of chords relating to a key and such. Voice leading is basically moving from chord to chord using small movements from note to note, using close voicings (the order in which the notes of the chord are stacked). In this way, a chord sequence is basically a few melodies going on at the same time. For instance, a C major chord is made up of the notes C, E and G; an F major chord is made up of the notes F, A and C. If you want to move from C major to F major, you could keep the C in the same octave through both chords, you could move from the E to the F, which is one semitone move and you could move from the G to the A which is a move of a tone. Each of those motions are easy to sing/whistle as they are close to each other. They're pretty economical.

A melody will generally gravitate to a particular tonic and the character that the other notes you use impart determines the tonality, the major/minor/lydian/dorian et c.. The chords which work with this are determined by taking one note of the scale and counting up in thirds, i.e. if C is your starting note, D would be the 2nd, E would be the third. From there you would go up another 3rd. These take the role of Root note, 3rd and 5th of the chord. The root of a C major chord is C, the 3rd is E, the 5th is G. 

You may notice that the distance from C to E is 4 frets and the distance from E to G is 3 frets, but I've said they're both 3rds. E to G is smaller, C to E is bigger. Big=major; small = minor. The tonality of a chord is determined primarily by whether the space from root to 3rd is a major or a minor 3rd. Major chords have a major 3rd from the root and a minor 3rd above that, C, E and G. Minor chords have a minor 3rd from the root and a major 3rd above that, C, Eb and G. Augmented chords have a major 3rd and another major 3rd above that, C, E and G#. Diminished chords have a minor 3rd with another minor 3rd above that, C, Eb and Gb. 

You can build a scale from choosing some chords and using the notes which those chords impart to create melodic content, or you can take a scale and divine the chords from the intervals between the present notes.

Does that help some?

There'll be consonance and dissonance between certain sets of notes and how you combine them will create character. To learn to write, you basically need to spend time working to find out what sorts of intervals, harmony and (very importantly) rhythm you like, and applying it variously. It'll be quite a long road of learning but the more you learn, the faster you'll learn, as long as you keep applying everything and critiquing the results.

In terms of where to go with an idea once you've written it, there's lots of craft to writing, which involves development in terms of harmony, embellishment and variation. Try playing about with inversions of the intervals in some of what you write and see how they add to or detract from the song to give it a bit more mileage.


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## QuantumCybin (Jun 24, 2013)

Yeah, I understand the basic concept of intervals, like if someone asked me to start at F and find the major third, I could, same with when it comes to why a chord is major, minor, augmented, or diminished. But what confuses me is how people memorize what chords fall into which keys...and even by saying that I feel like I'm oversimplifying that process.


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## wespaul (Jun 24, 2013)

QuantumCybin said:


> But what confuses me is how people memorize what chords fall into which keys



Could you clarify? Do you understand: I ii iii IV V vi viiº?


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## QuantumCybin (Jun 25, 2013)

wespaul said:


> Could you clarify? Do you understand: I ii iii IV V vi viiº?



Somewhat. I understand that you can make chord progressions by picking the I, ii, iii, IV chords, etc.

What I don't understand is how millions upon millions of songs have been writing either using the classic I IV V progression (why doesn't it sound the same? again, I'm lost when it comes to the contextual use of notes), or any other number of chord progressions out there.

If you're playing with musicians and one of them tells you "okay, we're in A, and the progression is one five four"....I have no clue what the hell that means!! Haha

I have a video series I bought a little bit ago from this website called guitarplayback.com, it's a series on applied theory for the guitar. That's where I learned about intervals. I haven't watched the entire series but it basically details the major and minor scales in all their positions, as well as a few of the existing modes out there. What also confuses me is how solo's or lead lines stay in key with a chord progression...how do you know it's going to sound good?! How do you know what notes to use?! haha


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## tripguitar (Jun 25, 2013)

QuantumCybin said:


> What I don't understand is how millions upon millions of songs have been writing either using the classic I IV V progression (why doesn't it sound the same? again, I'm lost when it comes to the contextual use of notes), or any other number of chord progressions out there.


 
I'm only learning this stuff myself, but maybe i can help here!




I IV V can sound different due to a couple reasons:

using different inversions of each chord will produce different textures while retaining the chord quality (in a traditional non-guitaristic approach, an inversion is when you take the 3rd or the 5th of the chord and place it lower than the root note. a 3rd on the bottom would be the 1st inversion of the chord, and putting the 5th on the bottom would be the 2nd inversion of the chord.)
rhythm and phrasing - if you're playing in 4/4 and each chord lasts for a single bar thats going to sound like its been done a million times before. using a different time signature, or changing chords on at an unexpected point in the phrase might produce a different kind of tension and/or release (resloution).
what other instruments are doing - often times even if the guitar is playing I IV V, the bass/vocals/synth or whatever will be doing other things that can affect the "feel" of the I IV V progression. like for example the bass guitar could be riding a pedal note the whole time while the guitarist is following the progression.



QuantumCybin said:


> I understand that you can make chord progressions by picking the I, ii, iii, IV chords, etc.
> ...
> If you're playing with musicians and one of them tells you "okay, we're in A, and the progression is one five four"....I have no clue what the hell that means!! Haha


 
Well if you know that the chords in a major key are I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi, and vii(dim) then you can figure out how to play a I IV V progression in A.

To find the notes in the key of A Major, use the major scale (an intervallic formula would be: w-w-h-w-w-w-h). So the notes would be:

A, B, C#, D, E, F#, G


Now, if we assign those notes to the chord pattern above (I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi, and vii(dim)) we can figure out the specific chords and how to build them for the I IV V progression.

I = A
ii = b
iii = c#
IV = D
V = E
vi = f#
vii(dim) = g(dim)

(keep in mind upper case letters represent Major chords, and lower case letters represent minor chords) 

So a I IV V in A Major would be as follows:

A Major, D Major, E Major.


BAM!!

Anyway I kind of wrote this out to help myself practice my theory skills!! It probably could have been worded/written better but the info is there. To those who REALLY know whats goin on, feel free to correct me if I made any mistakes here J


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## QuantumCybin (Jun 25, 2013)

Really appreciate it man, I see what you're talking about. Now, about the I IV V in the key of A...there's obviously numerous ways to play every chord, because chord names are subjective aren't they? Depending on the context they are used in? So I IV V could sound different depending on the chord voicings you choose?

Also, what if you know what chord comes next but you're not sure how to actually build the chord? Like if you didn't know what notes make up a D major, but you know it's in the key of A....how would you go about figuring that out? Is that just memorization of the fretboard? Or something else?


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Jun 25, 2013)

I started typing this up a few days ago, then got busy. Some of the information has been covered, but maybe the redundancy will help to elaborate.

Alright, here is the crash course on diatonic harmony. What we are going to do is start by looking at the major scale.







The first measure is a D major scale, in descending order, starting from the tonic. The scale contains seven discrete pitches, so we label them with numerals from 1 to 7. "1" will always be the the tonic, and "1 2 3 4 5 6 7" will always represent a major scale.

Measure 2: As you are probably aware, harmony in Western music is traditionally based on the interval of the third. When you take put a third from the same scale over every note in the major scale, you end up with a pattern of mixed major and minor thirds. All major scales conform to this M3 m3 m3 M3 M3 m3 m3 pattern.

Measure 3: If you stack another third on top of that, you end up with triads, the basic chord type. Just as harmonizing the major scale with diatonic thirds resulted in a mixture of different thirds, the triad harmonization results in a mixture of triads: major, minor, and diminished. We want to keep our numbering convention, but modify it to reflect the triad qualities, so we switch from Arabic numerals to Roman numerals, which have the option of different letter case. Upper case numerals represent major triads (I IV V), lower case represent minor triads (ii iii vi), and the addition of the ° symbol indicates a diminished triad (vii°). When put together, the major scale will be I ii iii IV V vi vii°. I suggest you remember that order. Some people like to look at it as "M m m M M m d", but make sure you tie the numerals in at some point.

Measure 4: The process of stacking thirds may continue to yield seventh chords. Doing this gives us a slightly more diverse palette of diatonic chords: major seventh (&#8710, major-minor seventh (7; also called dominant seventh), minor seventh (m7), and half-diminished seventh (ø7 or m7&#9837;5; I prefer ø7). The order for these will always be I&#8710; ii7 iii7 IV&#8710; V7 vi7 viiø7.

So if you see something like D A G D Em A D, you can safely assume the key is D major 95% of the time, because those chords are all diatonic (within the key). The harmonic analysis would be I V IV I ii V I.

The next thing you need to know is how to start building chord progressions. Chord progression starts with something we call "cadences". Cadence is how we end phrases, and there are two categories of cadences: the 'conclusive' cadences are used to make a phrase sound finished by ending on the tonic chord, and the 'inconclusive' cadences push the music to continue for another phrase by ending on a non-tonic chord.

The strongest conclusive cadence is the "authentic cadence", which is V I and vii° I. Note that V and vii° both include scale degree 7, which is called the "leading tone" because of its tendency to pull toward the tonic.
A weaker conclusive cadence is the "plagal cadence", which is IV I. There is no leading tone here, so it is not as urgent as the authentic cadence.

The inconclusive cadences include the "half cadence", which is when a phrase ends on V (or, rarely, vii°). It is called the half cadence because it looks like one half of an authentic cadence. We hear the leading tone, and we expect it to resolve to tonic, but it leaves us hanging before continuing on to the next phrase. The other inconclusive cadence is the "deceptive cadence", which is V vi. This sets up the expectation of the tonic chord chord, but doesn't give it to us. I like to point out to my private students that the deceptive cadence changes the mood of the progression: instead of getting major, we get minor. It leaves tension in the music and things unresolved.

To reiterate. Conclusive = authentic cadence (V I, vii° I), plagal cadence (IV I). Inconclusive = half cadence (? V), deceptive cadence (V vi).

====================

Continuing on to minor keys, it's much the same story.






The numbering is similar to the major scale, but notice that I am accounting for the intervallic differences between the minor scale and the major scale. D major has F#, D minor has F. If F# is 3, then F, being a half-step lower, is &#9837;3. The same applies for B (6) & B&#9837; (&#9837;6), and C# (7) & C (&#9837;7). The natural minor scale is, in Arabic numerals, 1 2 &#9837;3 4 5 &#9837;6 &#9837;7.

We'll skip the thirds harmonization and go straight to the triads. I've labeled the order of the triads here for you. The same naming convention applies as in the major key equivalent: &#9837;III &#9837;VI &#9837;VII are major, i iv v are minor, ii° is diminished. Altogether, that's i ii° &#9837;III iv v &#9837;VI &#9837;VII. Notice that I've accounted for the position of the chords relative to the major key: if F#m is iii, F is &#9837;III. This naming convention is not universal, and you'll see analyses that eschew the &#9837;'s (making i ii° III iv v VI VII), but I would encourage you to use &#9837;III etc. for now to reinforce this information.

Now, there's a problem with using the natural minor like this. The natural minor scale contains all of the notes and all of the chords of its relative major scale. So, Dm might be i in the key of D minor, but it is vi in the key of F major. In fact, every chord in D minor will have a correspondent function in F major. This throws a wrench into the works when you're trying to figure out what key a piece is in just by looking at the chords it contains. This also presents a problem in composition, because you may intend to utilize D minor, but end up sounding like you're in F major. There are ways to handle that, but you can eliminate the problem altogether by using the harmonic minor scale.






Note that this is the same thing as D natural minor, but with C# (7) instead of C (&#9837;7). That C# creates a half-step between itself and D, which creates a leading tone pull that brings our ear back to D rather than straying to F. When harmonized in triads, we get some important chords, as well as a new triad type.

Harmonic minor is meant to give V and vii° to a minor key. Both of these triads work well in leading back to i, because they have that leading tone. We also end up with an aberration, &#9837;III+, an augmented triad. In practice, &#9837;III+ does not crop up too often. More on that later.

Harmonizing the scale as seventh chords gives us a couple of new chord types, as well. i&#8710; is the first one to pop up. This is a minor tonic chord with a major seventh on top. You see this used, particularly in 20th century music (to the point where it becomes a cheesy cliché, if you ask me), but it is not a chord that we are particularly interested in. &#9837;III+&#8710; is what it looks like: an augmented triad with a major seventh, with &#9837;3 as its root. Once again, this is an odd chord. We don't use it very often. vii°7 is, by far, more important. This is a diminished triad with the interval of a diminished seventh placed on top. You hear vii°7 everywhere.

As I said earlier, harmonic minor is meant to give us V and vii° in the minor mode, and even better is V7 and vii°7, because these chords create a pull toward the tonic (i). i&#8710; and &#9837;III+&#8710; are interesting chords, but a bit jarring and relatively obscure in their usage. For that reason, our picture of the minor mode is a bit complex. The way that you should approach it is by taking the natural minor&#8230;

Triads: i ii° &#9837;III iv v &#9837;VI &#9837;VII
Sevenths: i7 iiø7 &#9837;III&#8710; iv7 v7 &#9837;VI&#8710; &#9837;VII7

&#8230; and only use V7 and vii°7 from the harmonic minor scale.

Triads: i ii° &#9837;III iv V &#9837;VI vii°
Sevenths: i7 iiø7 &#9837;III&#8710; iv7 V7 &#9837;VI&#8710; vii°7

Cadences in the minor mode are the same as in the major mode. Once again, there are conclusive and inconclusive progressions. Everything looks the same, in fact, except that we're dealing with minor mode chords.

Authentic: V i, vii° i
Plagal: iv i
Half: V
Deceptive: V &#9837;VI

One of the recent threads on this forum might help you to apply this stuff to the fretboard: http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/mu...trick-learning-what-chords-use-every-key.html

More on the way.


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Jun 25, 2013)

Chord progressions can basically be reduced to this: [A bunch of stuff] > [cadence]. What I want to do now is talk about the qualities of various diatonic chords and how they affect the sound of a progression. There are two categories of chords: primary chords and secondary chords. Primary chords are IV V I. Notice that these are the major chords in the major key. By playing with just these, you will have the most major sound that you can for that key. We can substitute the primary chords with secondary chords, which are the minor and diminished triads, which gives a more minor tinge to the progression. ii substitutes for IV, vii° substitutes for V, and iii and vi substitute for I. When you have a progression such as ii vii° I, it communicates the same thing as IV V I, but it has a slightly different flavor. You want to use these strategically, because too much substitution makes a progression that makes no musical sense. For example, ii vii° vi is not effective. You could say that vii° vi is a deceptive cadence, but there is no deception because we saw the minor thing coming from a mile away. ii V vi is a good deceptive progression, because there is still a major element to contrast with the minor element. IV V vi is an even better contrast.

Primary and secondary chords can also be paired up. For example, IV ii vii° V I. If you're going to do this, ii should come after IV. You can try ii IV versus IV ii if you want, and there is music that does that, but IV ii is a little stronger in terms of function. "vii° V" and "V vii°" are both possible, but we like to hear "V I" a little more than "vii° I", so "vii° V" is probably more common.

You'll notice that I haven't been using iii and vi very much. Those are kind of tacked on as an afterthought, so you see them going further outside of the progression, like this: iii > vi > [IV, ii] > [vii°, V] > I (possibly vi for deceptive cadence).

This flowchart offers a concise map to diatonic chord progressions:






Minor progressions work the same way: iv V i are the primary chords, and ii°, &#9837;III, &#9837;VI, and vii° are the secondary chords. You'll get the most basic minor sound from iv V i, vii° will make it even more minor, and &#9837;III and &#9837;VI introduce some major elements into the progression. We also have &#9837;VII to work with from the natural minor. This flowchart represents minor key progressions:






(I'm using III and &#9837;VI instead of &#9837;III and &#9837;VI there, because I made this chart in the context of another post. As I said in my previous post, you'll see both in play. It's faster to write "III" than it is to write "&#9837;III", so it comes down to preference. I'm using &#9837;VII, though, to differentiate it from vii°.)


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## wespaul (Jun 25, 2013)

SW just summarized 75% of everything you'll learn in your first semester of music theory class (well, if it was anything like mine).


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## QuantumCybin (Jun 25, 2013)

God damn, SW is doing serious work. Can't put into words how thankful I am, I've been reading and re-reading the posts on here. Makes me wish I had more time to spend with the instrument! Stupid job. So mixing major and minor chords isn't NECESSARY, but it's what brings life into the piece you're writing? At least in that aspect.


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Jul 1, 2013)

Excuse the late reply, I got really busy last week.

I wouldn't say that any one thing is necessary or unnecessary. It's art; do what fits the music. A mixture of primary and secondary triads helps to flesh out the key and gives you a more complete selection of diatonic colors, but I think that phrase structure and cadence is more important in conveying emotional content than whether you use ii or IV.

The Beatles - All My Loving







This song has some fairly good harmony. The first thing I would do is identify where the phrases are and what cadences are used to conclude them. The first phrase is the first two systems, and it ends on a half cadence. The chord progression is F#m B7 E C#m A F#m D B7, or ii V7 I vi IV ii &#9837;VII V7. The &#9837;VII is a borrowed chord, which we haven't spoken of yet. That chord is meant to give some chromatic color to the phrase, which, if you listen, it accomplishes quite well. You'll also notice that there is no way we could end the song right then and there. The half cadence poses a question. This questioning quality makes this an "antecedent phrase".

The next phrase is the third and fourth system, whose chords are F#m B7 E C#m A B7 E, or ii V7 I vi IV V7 I. The last two chords, V7 I, make an authentic cadence, which gives the sense of an answer to the prior question. When we have a phrase that answers the question of another phrase, it is called the "consequent phrase". This answer is particularly confident, because it is populated with a high percentage of primary chords, which I think are stronger in sound than secondary chords. Secondary chords, however delicate, lend more color than primary chords. It's a balancing act.

The A section is solidly constructed, but it mostly gives us one color: that of the key of E major. The way that things go in Western music, we usually like to hear some contrast at some point. We get that contrast in the B section (measures 18-25), when we have a brief excursion into the relative minor key, C# minor. The song is only two minutes long, so we don't have much time to elaborate on the new key; there isn't even a solid cadence onto C#m, but that little bit of other-key color helps to make the form better as a whole. The transition (26-33) brings us back to the key of E major by way of primary chords and an authentic cadence.

There is something satisfying in the way this music is structured: the phrases are all very even, there are questions that are answered, there is a bit of contrast in the B section to keep us from getting too bored, and the chord progression has a "bouncy" sort of sound that circles around before coming to a cadence. There is no ambiguity, no surprise (or any surprise that is there, is of the sort that we've, paradoxically, come to expect). You can tell that whoever wrote this song knew what they were doing, but the music is, in choice of harmony, rhythm, melody, form, orchestration, and textual content, fairly saccharine. I don't think that All My Loving is any more "alive" than, say, this song, despite the fact that All My Loving uses more chords, a greater variety of chords (Baba O'Riley is basically F, B&#9837;, and C in varying orders), and a more complex harmonic scheme overall. It's all in how you use your materials, and, probably more than us budding theorists would like to believe, how the lyrics are written.


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## QuantumCybin (Jul 3, 2013)

I'm starting to see how critical an understanding of intervals is. I know I have that concept down. When you make the conscious decision to write in a certain key, you don't have to start on the I chord by any means. But let's say you have a chord progression, and for the sake of the discussion it doesn't matter what the chord numbers are, and it's in the key of C, how can you place a lead line over that rhythm and have it correlate to the tonic the progression is being played in?

Something else I wonder about, imagine a typical breakdown you'll hear in metal. The drums and guitar are syncopated, at least in the sense of the kick drum. Now, what I wonder about is how does the musician know what chord to palm mute and chug to sound GOOD in the key that the song is in?

You can pick anywhere on the neck and chug away, but it won't sound good at all unless you know what chords to use. Are they using a certain trick or understanding on intervals to pull that off? Because the chugging rhythm almost always then has a lead line (thinking of shit like Periphery) being played over it to make it sound unique and fresh. What's the thought process behind that?

Oh, yet another thing I'm curious about. Since I'm not very good with actual note names as of yet, how can I figure out what chord I'm playing? Let's say I'm playing a 6 string guitar tuned to Drop C, and I play this chord:

D|---6---
A|---4---
F|---4---
C|---6---
G|---4---
C|---x---

How do I go about figuring out the name of that chord? Is that actually a common shape that my uneducated self is unaware of? And how could I possibly figure out how to utilize that chord in a songwriting context? Is it not part of a tonic until I make that decision of "okay I want to write in C", or does this chord already fit into certain tonics? I love that I can throw questions like this at people and actually get useful answers lol


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Jul 3, 2013)

QuantumCybin said:


> I'm starting to see how critical an understanding of intervals is. I know I have that concept down. When you make the conscious decision to write in a certain key, you don't have to start on the I chord by any means. But let's say you have a chord progression, and for the sake of the discussion it doesn't matter what the chord numbers are, and it's in the key of C, how can you place a lead line over that rhythm and have it correlate to the tonic the progression is being played in?



Not sure what you're asking. Harmonically, you make the best of the information you have. If the chord is G7, and there is a line going B A G F, then A is a non chord tone, B is the third of the chord, G is the root, and F is the seventh. In terms of melodic language, I'd need to see/hear what's going on. 



> Something else I wonder about, imagine a typical breakdown you'll hear in metal. The drums and guitar are syncopated, at least in the sense of the kick drum. Now, what I wonder about is how does the musician know what chord to palm mute and chug to sound GOOD in the key that the song is in?



They either have the requisite information, somebody told them to do it that way, or they're operating on intuition. There are a few other exceptional possibilities, such as blind chance or act of God. 



> You can pick anywhere on the neck and chug away, but it won't sound good at all unless you know what chords to use.



Well, you don't _need_ to know this stuff to sound good. I mean, there had to be good sounding stuff before people could study what it was they were liking. For some of us, though, it's fun to know. I look at learning music as though it was a language: you can learn it through immersion and growing up with it, maybe you can pick up the tools necessary to communicate without much structure, but for the rest of us who were not raised to speak the language of music, we use Rosetta Stone. You don't need a language degree to speak English.



> Are they using a certain trick or understanding on intervals to pull that off? Because the chugging rhythm almost always then has a lead line (thinking of shit like Periphery) being played over it to make it sound unique and fresh. What's the thought process behind that?



I'm at work right now, so I can't listen to anything, and I'm not familiar with Periphery et al. Post a song or two, and we can have a look at it. Music ultimately happens in the ear, so you can defer "how" somebody made somesuch sound to their sense of aural aesthetic. It is, of course, the brain that interprets sound and stores the information on what sounds like what, so it is equally plausible that a person produces music via information that they have learned and then proceeded to translate into music. What is important then is their view on what music is, and how they want to represent that. Some people think music is notes and rhythms and whiny tweens singing shallow lyrics, and they are unlikely to embrace and consequently produce something in the vein of post-spectralism. Two different vocabularies are needed for each of those styles, though, so it would stand to reason that you need to "learn" how to do that music in order to do it. 



> Oh, yet another thing I'm curious about. Since I'm not very good with actual note names as of yet, how can I figure out what chord I'm playing? Let's say I'm playing a 6 string guitar tuned to Drop C, and I play this chord:
> 
> D|---6---
> A|---4---
> ...



First get the notes. From the bass up:

B F# A C# G#

This isn't an easy chord to name. The way you're probably hearing and using it is B13sus2, or Bm13sus2. Can't really tell between those two without further context, because there is no third. However, the root could easily be any one of those other notes. Harmony like this is ambiguous. I can talk more about that when I get back home.


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## penningmic (Jul 3, 2013)

SW, awesome posts!! Will have to do some more reading to make sure that I have covered all the basics you outlined!


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## QuantumCybin (Jul 3, 2013)

Yeah, let me post a couple songs that I'm thinking of so you can have a better idea of that sound. Periphery - 4.Jetpacks Was Yes (Instrumental) - YouTube

Periphery - Buttersnips (Instrumental) - YouTube

Another band that has that same kind of tonality and style: Volumes "VIA" - YouTube

Can you explain in a general sense what you're hearing? What is going on in a technical aspect? I've heard the term "polyrhythm" before when describing certain aspects of songs like this...where the drum is playing in 4/4 but the guitar is playing in an entirely different rhythm.

EDIT: this song is another example, really good band: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTofVLJBy1c (Animals as Leaders--On Impulse)


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## fantom (Jul 4, 2013)

On the polyrhythm aspect, most bands that people say are polyrhythm really just write syncopated parts using math and have to "fix it" by inserting 2/4 or something into the song. Yes, you can say it is polyrhythm, but the listener clearly hears 4/4 in most of these songs because the drums are so heavily in 4/4. If it sounds like 4 bars of syncopated 4/4, it isn't polyrhythm to me.

But as a mentioned, you can use this as a guide for writing syncopation. Making something up on the spot... let's say you want to write something syncopated in 4/4. Well 4 bars are 16 beats. What if we do 16 = 7 + 7 + 2 (random choice). Use the same 7, but subdivide it again into 4 + 3 and use a typical beat. * - - -. For 3 let's start with * - -. And since we have a pattern, let's just use * - for the last bar of 2/4.


```
* - - -  4 beats
* - -    3 beats
* - - -  4 beats
* - -    3 beats
* -      2 beats
```

Now that is lame, so just change the 3/4 section to * - * (to get a "pickup" into the 4 beat section).


```
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 1 2  beat in 7/4 7/4 2/4
* - - - * - * * - - - * - * * -  guitar
* - * - * - * - * - * - * - * -  hi hat
- - - - * - - - - - - - * - - -  snare
* - - - - - * * - - - * - * * -  kick
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4  beat in 4/4
```

Yes, you could call this "polyrhythm", but it's clearly syncopated 4/4 with the rhythm written stealing 7/4 as a cycle. If you can actually count this *as a listener* in 7/4 and get confused by the drummer, then it is polyrhythm.


Let's look for a good example of polyrhythm...


It is 7/4 on the guitar + 4/4 on the drums. For the most part, it just sounds like a cool riff and a drummer playing in 4/4. However, the same guitar riff also is played behind a drummer playing in 7 (and sounds totally different). They still do this "fix it" moment at the end to "line up" the parts, but the guitar part and the drums are both interesting to follow.

The guitar part is a cycle of 7 notes. It is played 4 times typically. The drummer is playing pretty slow and needs 8 beats to complete his "part". So it sounds like 32 beats. The guitarist only has 28 beats, so adds in a few chords to fill in the extra time. Just to make it clear they did this, they occasionally throw in another 4 beats to make 36 beats.

0:22 The drummer is just playing super slow to emphasize bars of 4
0:56 The drummer is still in 4, the guitar player is still adding extra notes at the end to "add up"
Note: Up til now, I would never think this is polyrhythm. It sounds like 4/4 to me.
2:05 The drummer starts playing in 7, the guitar players extra 4 beats become more of a "break up", but the timing definitely changed with the drummer.
I'd say this is just a part in 7. I wouldn't argue it is polyrhythm either (though clearly influenced by some math trickery).

It bounces back and forth. There are still 32 beats in total, but the "sound" keeps changing between 4/4 and 7/4 + 4/4. That is until the end of the song...

Take a big notice at the difference between 4:19 and 4:40. The part clearly goes from a simple "4" to a polyrhythm, the drummer is playing faster and no longer needs 8 beats to "cycle" his part, he just needs 4 beats. So they drop extra 4 beats and actually start playing in 28 beats. The guitarist plays 4 bars of 7, The drummer plays the snare in 7 bars of 4... AKA, polyrhythm.


```
D---------------    ---------
A---------------    ---------
F---------------    ---------
C-7---7-----5-8-    -7-8-3---
G---------8----- x4 -----3---
D---5---6-------    -----1---
```

The main thing to note is that the drummer is clearly in control of the sound (with respect to timing) of the guitar part. The guitar part is pretty consistent the entire song.


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## celticelk (Jul 4, 2013)

^^^Technically, that's not polyrhythm - it's polymeter. If you played a guitar riff in seven over a drumbeat in four such that the guitar's seven beats and the drummer's four beats filled the same amount of time, that would be polyrhythm.


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## QuantumCybin (Jul 4, 2013)

Meshuggah - Perpetual Black Second - YouTube

This is another song I'm thinking of. The drums are 4/4 there, but what is the guitar in?

Meshuggah- New Millennium Cyanide Christ - YouTube

This song also comes to mind. The drums are obvious, but again, that guitar isn't playing in the same time, now is it?


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