In terms of song structure, this is because the tone is often supposed to be different, and a different key helps you create more contrast – but you can get usually away with closely related keys here, like the relative or parallel major/minor. Or the end of the chorus moving into a pre-chorus. Many, many songs have a verse in one key and a chorus in a different one. With that said, here are some of the times when modulation is most effective: It’s true that music theory teaches us some “rules” to remember, but making music should be more organic than that… So, follow your heart or whatever. We’ve looked at 5 excellent ways to implement key changes in your music, but there’s one more important question to answer before you start using them: where in a song should the key change happen?įirst of all, you’re in charge of your own music. When you make the leap from an E major chord to a G major chord, you have the power to choose whether the new key is G major, or whether you’re using G as the dominant and you’re actually in the key of C major.Ĭhanging keys with the chromatic mediant may take a little more careful planning to pull off, but it can work well – and because many artists don’t use it, your song can stand out with this technique. In this case, you see that B is a common tone in both chords, and G is a chromatically altered tone down one half step from G#. A chromatic mediant needs one common tone, as well as a chromatically altered tone. If you’re in the key of E, you can move to the key of G. To do a key change with a chromatic mediant chord change, let’s look at an example. Putting all of that together, a chromatic mediant is a chord that’s a third away from the chord you started at, falling outside of the current key. Real quick, remember that diatonic refers to the chords within a key, and chromatic refers to chords that lie outside of the key.Īlso, mediant refers to the third scale degree. That works too!īut if you want a structured way to move up more than a whole step, consider using a chromatic mediant. If you want to move even farther away from the key you started in, you’ll need a more advanced understanding of music theory – or the courage to just experiment and figure out what sounds good. All of the chords and the melody notes stay the same in relation to each other – but they end up a half step higher than before. In effect, nothing changes except for the change in keys. There are countless examples of songs that change keys like this – often, you’ll hear a few notes of the melody in the new key before the accompaniment comes in as well. (But if done wrong, the effect is SUPER cheesy…) Sometimes, you just sorta take the leap.ĭone right, it’ll sound great and add an uplifting energy to the song in its final stretch. Why jump a half step? In previous examples, we talked about using a pivot chord to smooth out a modulation – but you don’t ALWAYS need a smooth chord transition to go from one key to another. It’s not a crazy distance, but it’s still big enough that listeners will take notice!Īn example of a half step jump is moving from the key of Eb major to the key of E major, or from the key of B major to the key of C major. The half step is the most common interval for a direct key change like this. In the example above, Em or G major would be effective pivot chords since they sound so similar and are shared by both the key of G and the key of Em. To easily switch from one key to its relative major or minor key, all you really need is a shared chord – called a pivot chord – that transitions between them smoothly. This gets back to what I was saying before about the tonal center – it’s the tonic note or chord that all other notes and chords in the key sound in relation to. For the relative major, locate the 3rd scale degree in the minor key.) (You can find the relative minor at the 6th degree of the major key, or count down three semitones from the tonic. Notice, they both consist of the EXACT same notes, just shuffled around a little! In the case of E minor, it simply starts on the note E instead of G. The magic thing about them is, any relative major and minor key both contain ALL of the same seven notes and chords.įor example, the key of G Major has the following notes:Īnd its relative minor key of E minor? That one contains the following notes: I guarantee you’ve done this before without even thinking twice about it! Every major key has a closely related key called the relative minor – they’re kind of like cousins or siblings. 1) Switch to the Relative Major or Minor Key
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