Transcripts
1. Intro : Hey, and welcome to my course
on harmonic modulations. It's a bit of a
mouthful, but it's a relatively simple concept if you approach
it the right way. I'm here to help you understand
how composers move from one key or set of notes to another key or a
different set of notes. We can navigate from
a major sound to a minor sound or major to
major, minor to minor. There are tons of
different possibilities, and there's lots
of different ways to navigate between these keys. A quick way of explaining
harmonic modulation might be to imagine yourself in a room with many doors all around you. Some are easier to view and some are more difficult perhaps
they're behind you. The idea is you have a key ring like a janitor
with tons of keys, and you get to decide because each door
has multiple locks, which type of key you want to use to get in to which door. If I'm in this room of C major, and I'm playing around in the
C major room, so to speak, but I decide, hey, for
the next few minutes, I actually want to be
in the D minor room. Okay, we can get you into that D minor room
using a modulation. And in the case of a modulation, we're thinking again of this as one of the keys you can select. Now, the key that you select to open that door
represents the type of modulation that
you're going to use to go between
different keys. Now, I'm going to go
through that analogy in much greater detail
within the course. But again, I wanted to give
some context for people that don't understand what a
harmonic modulation is. And I've always
found that analogies work pretty well
for my learning, so I hope they help
you as well, too. So the different types
of harmonic modulations available to you in this course, in other words, the key that you will select to open the door. Include dominant seventh chords, diminished seventh chords, LA five chords, four chords built as a minor six,
so on and so forth, there's tons of
different examples, and whether you're a classical
player, a jazz player, a neo sole player, it doesn't matter
there's going to be a harmonic modulation
in this chorus for you. These modulations are one of my favorite techniques to
use when I'm improvising, because it allows me
to connect ideas. Once I feel one idea
has been exhausted, I can modulate into a
whole new fresh idea. Now, whether you want to write
a sonata like Beethoven, where minutes are spent in one key and then
move to another key. Or whether you want to write a pop song where your
chorus is in one key, but your bridge modulates
into a new key. Or if you're just
looking to spice up your progressions a little
bit for brief moments, using these
modulations will help you from big context writing, two chord progressions, and
different ways to color them. These modulations
can help you from the biggest contexts
within composition, down to just creating
some variations within your chord progressions. You're going to have two options
for this Chorus project. First one is pretty small. You would come up with
a chord progression and try to put some
modulation within it. Again, this type of
modulation is very temporary. We're just finding
a different way to pull into one
of the chords of our progression
before continuing through it and finding
our way back home. The second option is to take one of the songs that
you're working on and include a harmonic modulation to bridge between two of the different sections
of your song. A great example would
be if you're working on a song that has
a lot of parts, for example, intro, verse, pre chorus, chorus,
second verse, second prechors, second chorus, You want to keep going and you want to move into a bridge, that second chorus
into the bridge is a great spot to use one
of these modulations. But you're not limited to that. Use it where you think
it's going to work best. Whether you want to try
applying these modulations in a chord progression context
or a full song context, you'll have both
of those options available to you for
this courses project. This course is created for composers, producers,
and improvisers. Anyone creating music
whether quickly in an improvised context
or thoroughly through something like a full
orchestral These modulations can definitely help you progress to the next level as a composer. Before I go into
any more details, I think it's best
that we start to break things down bit by bit. I'll see you in the first class.
2. Class Project: Now let's get talking about
your project for this course. Now you're going to have two
different options available, and both are going
to require you filming yourself applying
these modulations. The first project
option is quite simple. Take a chord
progression that you like and throw in one
of these modulations. It's not going to be the type of modulation where you stay
in a key for a while. It's a very temporary feeling. I'm going to give
you an example, but if it doesn't make tons
of sense at this point, I haven't taught you all
about modulations yet, but I do want to give you an example of something that you can come back to later just in case there's
any confusion. Let's take the chord
progression, C minor, a flat major, F minor,
G dominant seven. In C minor, this is a one, flat six, four, five. We're going to add
one little modulation before the five chord. We're going to take the
five of that chord. The G dominant seven, the five of G dominant
seven is D dominant seven. I'm going to squeeze that
in before the five chord, and now it sounds like this. It's just a subtle variation on the basic progression
that we started with. Now, you can use any of the modulations that are
provided within this course, but you'll find that some work better in certain contexts, and it's going to
take a little bit of exploring on your end to find the sound that
you're looking for. The second option is to apply a modulation between
sections of a song. Let's say that chord progression
represents our chorus. For my next section, my bridge, I want to get into E flat major
as my key for the bridge. Well, again, I could take
something like a dominant cord, one and fifth above and
use that cord to unlock the door to bring us into that new key. It
would sound like this. C minor, A flat, F minor, g, linger on a B flat
dominant seven, and then we're into E flat. Again, that would
sound like this. Whatever song
you've been working on where you feel
like you want to connect the sections between the song with a little
bit more of a pull. These modulations are going
to help you out a lot. If you're not already working
on a song, compose one. Come up with something.
It doesn't have to be extravagant. Keep it simple. It's just about either
applying this technique so you understand it
or best case scenario, using it in one of your own compositions
to help improve it. Now, in both cases, whether you're using a
progression or applying this within a full
context of a song, you're going to be recording yourself playing
these modulations, and then you're going
to be submitting them into the project
section of this course. Now, you can't actually upload a video file onto Skillshare. So instead, you're going to upload a link of
your video file. Make sure that you're
uploading your video to YouTube or Video,
and then from there, sharing a public link to the project resource
section of this course. Then from there, I'm
going to be reviewing your project entry
in hopes to give you some tips so that you
can get the most out of these modulations in the
future. So that's it. That's the course project. I hope you have
some fun with it. Make sure that
you're doing it on a day where it feels right. Don't force it, keep it simple, and I'll catch you
in the next class.
3. What is a Harmonic Modulation: Let's start off by
talking about what a harmonic modulation is. The basic concept of a harmonic modulation is
that we're taking harmony, hence the word harmonic, and modulating into either
a new key or a new chord. If that sounds confusing,
allow me to explain. Imagine I'm Beethoven writing
a longer work in C major. Like I'm talking like
a 15 minute piece. To stay in C major the whole time would
get really boring, even if you were to vary the chord progressions,
the melody, the phrasing, it's all stuck in the same sandbox of C major. So what we might want to
do is instead move to another key or another set
of notes similar to a scale, but remember a scale is played
in a very particular way. A key is just that set of notes. So maybe I want to have a
section that sounds very minor, or maybe I want to have
another section that's major, but uses a different
key instead of C major. I can't just jump
into this other key. We need a segue.
It's like sentences. You can have two pretty
disjunct thoughts, but if you have the
right segue in between, you can connect those ideas. And generally, to knock
it too far off the rails, you want to come back
to your first point. Often that's how harmonic
modulations work. We move to another key, possibly a couple of other keys, and then eventually
find our way back. Now on this grander scheme
of talking about modulations within this very large
Beethovensque piece, you would probably stay in
that other key for a while. As a pianist, I'm used to seeing multiple pages in this new key. Now, in the context of this very large symphony or sonata or whatever
it might be, when we're moving from
one key to another, we're going to stay in
that new key for a while, just so that we can
really play with a lot of different ideas while we
are in that different key. After all, we've
done the hard work of getting from one
key to another, we might as well stay there
for a bit before coming back. So to give an example, if
I'm playing in C Major, It's quite tough for me to move to the relative minor A minor without feeling
like I'm still in C. So I'm in C major right now. Again, my left hand, the harmony is
moving to A minor, but it doesn't feel settled. It maybe wants to go
back to C in this case. So I need something a harmonic modulator to
bring me to A minor. And now It feels like I've
settled into a minor, and I can play around with
that new key while I'm there. Now, there's many
ways that we can execute a harmonic modulation, moving from one key
into another key. And within this course,
we're going to cover a bunch of different ways that you
can do these modulations, and you can pick your
favorites and focus on those. So while we've talked about
the bigger picture of modulating between
sections of a larger work, we can also modulate between sections of
something smaller, like a pop song or a rock one. Let's say I'm in C minor, but I want the bridge of
my song to be in F minor. No problem. So let's say I'm playing a pop piece
and it's in C minor. My chord progression
is one, four, five, one, I can use a chord help
me transition to f minor. Now I'm in the key of f minor. And then likely again, at
the end of the bridge, you'd want to find
a way to modulate back to your home key, and then take it to the end
of the song from there. So big picture,
modulating between sections of a larger
work, medium picture, modulating between sections of a smaller, more modern work, like pop or rock,
even smaller picture, you can modulate within
a chord progression. Or if you're JS Bach, you can modulate every 4 seconds because he's
constantly modulating. So maybe you're using one of these modulations in a short
progression, like one, four, five, one in C minor, similar to the progression
we used before. Now we can use a chord
to pull us into one of those other middle chords
like the F minor or the g and then continue
through the progression. It doesn't actually
bring us into a key. It doesn't bring
us into F minor, but it pulls us in with a little bit more
weight and allows us to continue the
progression in a little bit of a spicier way. Allow me to demonstrate.
Here's the one. I'm going to use a
diminished chord. We'll cover this later. Here's my one, diminished into four, diminished into five. Let's go five SS into the five. Without me talking,
it sounds like this. And I'm still in C. There's a great example of within a small chord progression using a modulation
or in this case, a couple of modulations. But the purpose of
those modulations is to not truly modulate
into a new key. It's just to find a
way to take a cord outside of our home
key to bring us into one of the cords within our cord progression with more weight and
magnetism. Heads up. I'm going to be using
a lot of analogies in this course, brace yourself. I hope you like analogies. Give you the bach example, we'd have to go
really deep within baroque harmony and analyze
a whole bach piece, which I think would be a
course all on its own. But if you are working with a
teacher and you're curious, let's say you've done some
classical or baroque training, and you want to learn a little bit more of the harmonic theory, analyze pretty much anything from the well tempered Clavier. You're going to find so many of these harmonic modulations, or maybe what we could call harmonic shifts because again, he's not staying in the
new keys for very long. Sometimes he stays for a bit. Other times it's for like a bar, and then he moves back to a different key or his home key. Because he's so
comfortable in every key, he just constantly finds
himself navigating from one key to another
key into another key. So to summarize, what is
a harmonic modulation? It's simply a cord that is outside of the diatonic
set of cords that we would usually have available
that pulls us into some other cord
or some other key. Again, thinking big picture, these cords allow
us to go between two big sections where one
section is in a certain key, and the next section
is in another key. Scaling down to
more modern music, we would use it the same way, but between sections of, let's say, a pop
song or a rock song. This is very common
if the song is a bit extended, for example, it has a bridge because we can stay in a key
for quite some time, but as the song gets longer, that's when we start to
run the risk of kind of over saturating too
much within that key, so we might want to
venture into another key. So scaling down even further, you can use these modulations within chord
progressions themselves. They aren't acting
truly as modulations. In other words, we're not moving to another key and
staying there. The function is the same. Again, it brings you
into one of the chords of your progression with
more weight and attention, but then you can continue your progression
as you had been. Where I like to use
these tricks the most is within my
improvisations. Modulations allow me to keep the listener guessing and interested in what
I'm performing. And they're
ultimately a big part of if I ever get like a head
turn lick, what was that? As I'm improvising? It's
probably because I'm using some form of a more
advanced modulation. Now, do I expect you to fully understand modulations
at this point? No. I just wanted to briefly discuss what are modulations
and when do you use them. But to make more
sense of modulations, we're going to jump
into the next class, where I'm going to
give you a couple of different analogies
and different ways to think about these modulations before we start to break them
down one at a time so that you can pick your
favorites and start to use them in your
own compositions, improvisations,
productions, and so on. So while that was
a brief overview, we're about to jump in
a whole lot deeper. I'll see you in the next class.
4. Harmonic Modulation Analogies: Okay, so I'm going to give you a couple of different analogies to help you better understand modulations, because otherwise, it's just me talking a
lot of theory at you, but I find that analogies
really do help give a different perspective
on something in a bit more of a
simple atmosphere. We're going to first talk
about how modulations are like janitors. Allow
me to explain. Janitors have these
huge key rings, and those keys will open
numerous stores within, let's say a school or
wherever they might be. We're going to use C major as our home key
for this example. This is the room that
we're sitting in. We are in the C major room. If I go from a C to skips, D up to skips, so on and so forth, I get all of the chords available
within C major. Let's say I've been
playing a piece and I've been in C
major for a while. I'm using the scale to
select notes for my melody, and I'm using that
collection of chords moving around so that I have plenty
of chord progressions. But now I'm ready to go
into a different key. The keys that are most
readily available relate to the chords that we
just talked about. Second chord in our C
major scale was D minor. So I want you to think of D
minor as having its own door. E minor has a door, F major has a door, G major has a door, A minor has a door, and this B diminished
chord is like for now, it's the door with
the big chains over it that says, do not enter. We're not worried about
that door for right now. So these are going to be
the keys that you can most easily modulate into. So let's just choose D
minor as our first example. Now, if I want to go
into the D minor door, I have to look
through my ring of keys to find out how
to get into that door. Now, luckily, there's like, let's say four or five different
locks on that door and unlocking any one of them
allows you into that door. Okay, so now I have a few
different keys that could work. Now how do I want
to open the door? Do I want to use the little
key for the little lock? Do I want to use the big
key for the big lock? Essentially, these
keys represent cords that can unlock the door, that can bring us
into that new key. So from S major, I can use this cord.
To get to D minor. From C major, I could use
this cord to get to D minor. From C major, I could use
this cord to get to D minor. There's a lot of different
ways that you can pull into that door. Now I have, again, all
the same sets of keys for E minors door and for F majors door. I want
you to think of it. Like, a key is a room, and you can stay in
that room for a while. You do some things. You've sat on the couch, you've
watched a movie. You walked over and
you played solitaire, and then you played
some video games or whatever might
be at some point, you've exhausted
everything in that room, and you're like,
I kind of want to see what's in this next room. Maybe there's some
different stuff going on. That's the same sort
of idea as using a lot of your compositional
tricks within a key. And you get to this
point where you're like, I think I've kind of
exhausted that key. Let's go into the next room or the next key for a
while before we return. It's my job in this course. To show you all those
janitor keys that are available to get into any
one of those other doors. Now, I do want to mention
in the C major scale, we don't have any of
these black notes. You can modulate to those keys, but the cords that are
available within your home key are going to be the
keys that you can most easily modulate into. In other words, it's
going to be easiest on the listener's ear and just a bit of a
smoother transition. So I'm going to give you
an example that you won't have full context
of at this point, but feel free later
to come back to it. I just want to show you this as an example to kind of further go through this door analogy with you before we move on
to the second analogy. I'm in the room of C major. And for now, I'm
not going to try to play melodies and make
it into a whole piece. I'm just going to kind of
stomp around on a chord. Maybe I'll play a second
chord just to make sure that your ear is really
grounded in our home key. So we're in C major.
Where do we want to go? Let's say we want to go to
the E minor door this time. Now, which trick do I
want to use to get there? Which device do I want to use? The big key, the little key, the wonky key, the smooth key. Let's use the the wonky key. I'm just calling it wonky. The idea is it's a very
jagged little key. This might represent
diminished harmonies. So maybe now I have
something like. I'm in E minor. Okay, let's stay in E minor
for a little bit. Now how do I want to
get to the next room? Now, maybe before I
return back to C, I want to move to
the F major door. Those two rooms are
right beside each other. So maybe like hotels. There's a door connecting
those two rooms. Okay. Same idea. There's a lot
of locks on that door, Which key do I want
to use to unlock it. Let's use the big key. Maybe the big key is
a dominant chord. That's going to be one
of the first things that we covered in this course. Let's talk about that
dominant chord bringing us to F. Our dominant chord
will be C dominant seven. And then we're in
the F major room. Okay. So now, at some point, I have to come back to my C major room.
And I'm in F major. So how do I want to
get back to C major? Well, actually, let's
pull first to G major. We're going to move one
more hotel door over to the G Major
room it's gonna be a really great
transition back loops. So the idea here is, we're going to use
a diminished chord to get to the G major room as a sort of connected semitone
between those two keys. Now if I make this
dominant chord, I'm back to the C major room. So you can see,
we didn't have to come right back to
the C major room. We could play around in
some of those other rooms. And the hotel analogy I was giving is when two rooms
are beside each other, and there's a door
in between them. You can go between those
rooms maybe a couple of times before you come
back to the main room. Or in this case, maybe we're
talking about a hallway. Our main key is the hallway. And as we're walking down, there's all these other doors. I'm starting to think maybe I should have used a
hallway as an analogy, but in my mind, it's always been a room with a bunch of doors. So use either of those. So another way that we could
explain these modulations, another analogy is
imagine that you're walking down a path in a forest, and the path continually splits out into all
these other paths. Now, again, similar to before
you've exhausted the path, you've analyzed all the trees, you've heard all the birds call, and you're kind of
bored with that path, and you want to move to
one of the other ones. The problem is to
get onto this path. Maybe that's the D minor path, you need a hedge trimmer. To get to the E minor path, you're going to
need a lawn mower. To get to the F major path,
you need to have a shovel. There's something that
you need to transition into that path before
you get there. Again, that would be the idea of modulating into a new key. Similar to the keys
opening doors, now we have some
sort of device to help us get to another path. From there, the analogy
kind of works the same way. I don't know how in my mind, I'm imagining the two doors that were beside each other
like the hotel doors. The paths analogy doesn't
quite work as well. Maybe they're kind of stacked
on top of each other. But anyway, if we're
just thinking about a home key and modulating
to one other key for now, it's really easy to kind of
think about we're on a path. And again, that works really well with the
hallway from before. But we're on this path, and we're trying to get
to another path, but we can't just walk into it. I can't just say,
hey, I'm in C major, and now now I'm in E minor. What still has this
gravitational pull back to C unless use the right or
to pull into E minor. Again, in other
words, I have to use the right tool to
transition to that path. From here, there's
probably a lot of other analogies that you could come up with in your own mind. So think about what
works best for you. Again, my favorite analogy is imagining you're in a
room with tons of doors. The main doors that
are visible to you are the ones
that are diatonic, true to your key. So this D minor do, E minor do F major door. But maybe you look behind
yourself and you see an E flat minor E
flat major door, F sharp major F
sharp minor door. They're still in the
same room as you. They're just a little
bit less visible and a little bit
harder to get over to. This is all going to make
more sense as we go through these modulations
individually as we get through the
rest of the course. But I wanted to give
you some analogies because this concept
can get pretty deep, and it's helpful to
have some other sort of assistance in visualizing what's happening with
these modulations. In our next class, we're
going to jump into one of the most basic
forms of modulation, but you'll get a lot
of mileage out of it. We're going to be talking about the dominant seventh chord. So while they might be simple, they are super
effective and used all the time in plenty
of styles of music. I'll see you in the next class, where we're talking about
dominant seventh chords.
5. V7 (Dominant 7th Chords): Oh. All right. Let's get talking about
dominant seventh chords and how they can be used to
modulate between keys. I'm going to continue to use this analogy of being in a
room with multiple doors, and we're going to go into
each of the different doors right now using dominant
chords to modulate. But first, we have to cover what is a dominant
seventh chord. Let's go back to the
basics. M C major. I have a C major
chord available, D minor or available, E minor, F major, G major, A minor,
and B diminished. If I then add an extra note
to each of these chords, one skip higher, have C
major seven, D minor seven, E minor seven F major
seven, g dominant seven, a minor seven, and B half diminished or B
minor seven flat five. Now, this fifth chord, this dominant seventh chord is a very potent chord to
bring us back to C. For a few different reasons. Firstly, in the harmonic
overtone series, When we play a note, there's all these other harmonics
that are happening up above. So if I play this low C, you're actually hearing c
plus another C plus a G plus another c plus an E
plus a G plus a B flat, and it keeps going into these smaller and
smaller low intervals. But the first note that
we have that isn't a C is this G. So a fifth above whatever note we have is a great confirmation that this bottom note
is our resolution. Bit of an abstract thought, so I don't want you to put
too much weight onto this. But basically using
physics and science, the fifth is a very
important interval. It sounds very
harmonious to our ears, and it helps us solidify that one fifth
below in this case, is a destination tone
for a resolution. But we don't have to go so
deep into all the science. Let's use stories
as an example here. If my story is, I
woke up this morning, I went to my neighbor's
house, and I came back home. That'd be a pretty boring story. I haven't gone very far,
I haven't done very much. But as most great stories have, there's a whole journey. So if I start off at home
and I go all the way to the ocean so that I can
catch some fresh fish, and then I come back home
and I make some sushi, maybe that makes
for a better story. But the idea here is
with our harmonic story, we wouldn't just move over
a note and come back. We can, I'm not saying we can't, I'm just saying that's not
the most convincing move. I can move a little further, maybe to E minor in back to
F and back to G in back. So what's the furtherest
journey that we can have with these notes
that are available to us? So if we exclude C moving to C, you might say, Oh, I could go all the
way to this B. That's really far. But
let's flip the lens. If I go the other way,
B is not that far. So if we think
about which note is furthest in both
directions, we would get G, which is a fifth up and
a fourth down or F, which is a fourth
or a fifth down. So these two chords really help bring us back to C with G, being the more dominant
of those two sounds. And again, it's called a
dominant seventh chord. So even without a
full dominant sound without this extra skip, this progression of
one going to five and coming back to one has
been used so many times. Was another great possibility
to create tension against your one chord is shifting down to the diminished and back. It's a bit more jarring. But in classical music,
especially in minor keys, they talk a lot about
these diminished chords. So this five chord G major, plus B diminished gives you
both types of tensions that take you back to C. We will be going more into
diminished harmony in one of the other classes. So don't get too
caught up with that. I kind of just wanted
to show you that this diminished chord is
like a super tension chord, where it's the five
wanting to go to the one, but it's also the
diminished seven wanting to move to the one, smash the two together, and you get this
super tense chord. Going back to your one chord. So if this chord really, really, really pulls us down a fifth, then what if I played it
in a different position? We can take any of the
other notes except for B and move up a fifth from
one of those notes. At that destination, we will play a dominant
seventh chord that resolves down a fifth to the
chord that was in question. So again, D minor, E minor, F g or A minor. So let's modulate into all of
those other possible keys. We're going to be
ringing through our keys to open up all the
different doors, but we're just using
one type of key. Maybe the key that
we're using to visualize is the big key. The big key is the
dominant seventh chord, and it can take us into any
one of those other doors. Let's start off by modulating
into the D minor door. Now up one fifth from D is A. Fifth, you can just
think seven semitones, but eventually you should
know all your perfect fifths. You can also think of
them as bottom note to a top note of a major
or a minor chord. That's the distance of a fifth. Here's D. Here's
our destination. We're going up a fifth to A, and we're going to play an
A dominant seventh chord. So we're going to play a major, and then one tone
below our octave is going to give us
the extra note that we need for our dominant
seventh chord. We call this note a minor
seventh or a flat seven. So it's a major chord with a minor seven or a major
chord with a flat seven. So we have this A dominant
will take us to D minor. So we're going to start each of these examples in C major, our home key, one, five, one. And then we're
going to modulate. Here's our A dominant. To D minor. Now it feels
settled in D minor. So we're going to
use the same trick for all the other keys for D, we went up a fifth, we
play a dominant down to D. And I will supply a PDF with all the different dominant seventh chords and their notes. So make sure that you
look out for that within the resource section
of this class. Next, we're going to modulate
from C major into E minor. We're going to go into
the E minor door. Let's move up one
fifth from E minor. We end up getting B. We're going to play B major
down a tone from the octave. That gives us B
dominant seventh, and then we resolve
down to E minor. Let's try it out. 151 and C. Let's play that B dominant. Now we're in E minor.
Let's keep it going. This next one's
funky because we're going to be modulating
to the F major door. We're going to be using a key
to get through that door. And what is up a fifth from F? Well, it's C. But
aren't we already in C? How can I use C major
to modulate to F major? It's just going to sound
like I'm staying in C. Now, remember, the
dominant seven chord is a major chord with a
tone below the octave. Is this B flat from C major? No. It's actually from
the F major scale. So it's like a foreshadow
of the next scale to come. Because we're playing this
note that is not from C major, it tells our ear that some sort little harmonic twist is happening. This
works the same way. I'm in C major one, five, one. Now I just play C
dominant seven, which is the five of F major. Now, I should mention,
when I say five of, that is an important term. All it means is up a fifth from your destination
as a dominant chord, sometimes known as 57. And this is all represented
in Roman numerals. I can't go too deep
into the weeds to talk about all of harmony
and progressions. I have other courses
on that stuff, but I'll do my best to make sure that I cover all the stuff needed for you to best
understand modulations. So the five of D is
A seven up a fifth. The five of E is B
seven up a fifth. So when I was saying
the five of F, I was talking about C seven up a fifth from F. So again, one, five, one, the five of F, which is C dominant
seven takes us to F. Now it feels
like we're in f major. The same thing applies when
we're heading over to G. Here's our destination.
We're trying to get through the G door. Let's go up a fifth. We have D major, D major with a flat seven, one tone below the octave. This is D dominant seven. This is the big chunky
key we were looking for, the dominant key to go into the dominant lock to get us
into that room of G major. So again, we have 15, one in C major. This grounds our ear, so we're hearing that
we're in C major. Let's try out this
D dominant seven. It takes us into G very nicely. We have one more key that we're going to cover because again, the B diminished
door is banished. A minors our next key, and this one has a
special function. Some of you may
know that C major has a brother or sister key. We could say a relative key, has the same DNA, the same way relatives
have very similar DNA, but it doesn't sound
major, it sounds minor. That is A minor. A minor shares all the
same notes, the C major, To be more clear it's
a natural minor, there's plenty of different
types of minor scales. So we're going to be modulating
to A minor in this case. And this is one of the most
common types of modulations. Because it's almost like
you've never really left C. You've just opened up the possibility of playing
a more minor sound for a while while still staying
very close to your home key. It's all the same notes, and it's easy to modulate
back to C from this point. So A up a fifth gives us E E major plus a tone
below the octave. There's our E dominant seven. So we're going to
start off in c15, one. Here's our E Domin coming up. I'm an A minor. Again, it's still the same set of notes available
within this new key. When we modulated to, for example, the
last key, G major, that opens up a new
note F sharp because the G major scale
has an F sharp. The key of F major, Has a B flat. So when we
modulate into these other keys, we have to consider what
their key signature is, what sharps or flats
exist in that scale. But again, what's
really neat is that when we modulate into A minor, it has all the same
notes as C major. So if we use the
path analogy again, it might be sort of
like the same path, but during the day, it's major, and then at night it's minor. But we haven't left that path. So again, to recap, in the current C major
room that we're in, the doors available
to us are D minor, E minor, F major, G major, and A minor. Any of those doors
that I go into. If I go into the D minor door, I have to then play around with the notes using the D
natural minor scale. If I go into the E minor door, I have to then use the notes
that are in E natural minor. The F major door
gives us f major, the G major door
gives us G major, and the A minor door
gives us a minor. While we're using chords
to go between these doors, once I'm in that room, now it's not just chords, it's that whole set of notes. The whole scale or key
becomes available. To get into any of those doors using a dominant seventh
chord key to get in. You want to make sure that you consider, where's
my destination? If it's the D minor door
that I want to get into, you go up a fifth and you
play a major chord plus, a flat seven above it or
a tone below the octave. Now this is a dominant
seventh chord and it allows you to open up that door so you can get into the key or the
room of D minor. Now, those are the most common modulations available to us because we're never really
leaving the path too far. We're still choosing ors or keys that are somewhat
related to our home key. But there's two other options
that we can have to get further and further
off the beaten path. What if instead of
modulating to E minor modulated to E major, or instead of D minor D major, instead of F major F minor, so using the same routes
as our destinations, but flipping the tonality
from major to minor. Going to be more jarring,
but it still works. A dominant seventh chord as
we've already demonstrated, it likes to fall down a fifth, but it's not biased as to a
major or minor resolution. Some will sound a little bit
more effective and natural, whereas others will be a little bit more challenging,
but they'll still work. Let's use D minor as
our first example. We're going to change
it to D major. Now, we're not really
considering at this point harmony that's
within the key of C major, but again, that's
the point we're getting off the
beaten path a bit. Now I have one, five, one in C major, D Majors dominant cord is
still the same as D minors. It's A dominant
seven Nyman D major. Still transitions quite nice. Without me talking,
one more time. L et's choose one
of the major doors and flip it to a minor door. Let's choose G. G major is
now going to be G minor. We're going to modulate from the key of C major to G minor. Let's try it out. We
have one, five, one. Now G minor, the five of
G minor is D dominant. And now I'm in G minor. Smooth transition. Now, if
we want to get even further, further, further off
the beaten path, let's talk about these
other notes that are available fully outside
of the key of C major. These ones are a
bit more jarring, but it's like saying something really random and
then justifying it. It's what you do after the randomness that really
pulls this together. Let's modulate to
any one of these. Let's say E flat. So I'm in C major,
one, five, one. What is the five of E flat? It's B flat, so let's play
B flat dominant seven, and then to E flat, a minor. Okay. Without me talking, here it is again, So when
I go to this B flat chord, it's like, what the
heck is he doing? And then I pull into here,
it's like, Oh, k, k. A is resolved. So keep in mind, if you go to the D minor door, the first sort of version of
this that we talked about, things will feel easiest
for your listener. There's still a bit of a
challenge with hearing some of these dominant
chords out of nowhere, but they're quickly resolved. Now, if you want to go to
any one of those same doors, but flipping the tonality, the D minor door
becomes a D major. The E minor door becomes an
E major, that sort of idea. It's going to be
a little bit more challenging on the
listener, but not by much. Now, if you want to modulate to a key fully outside of
your home key, again, using C major as an example
and moving to any one of these black notes as
your new destination, that is going to be the most challenging on your listener. But again, if you use these dominant seventh
chords to modulate there, it'll be a moment of
quite a bit of tension, and then there is that release, that resolution as you
pull into the new key. What I will say is
that when you move to, for example, e flat minor, Good luck getting back to C. It's going to be a
little bit tougher. It's not impossible.
Again, you can use a dominant cord to
bring yourself back. But there's ways
to smooth this out and it takes practice
and it takes experience. I'll use the most bare
bones example to go from C major to E flat minor and then back to C.
But you'll notice, again, it's a little
bit jarring at times. Let's try it out. C major, one, five, one, five of E flat minor. Or an E flat minor. Now let's stay here for a bit. Okay, now let's modulate back to C. Listen to that modulation. We were here, and then we
went oh kind of spicy, but then it resolves. So there are levels
of spiciness, ear spice that we can have based on where
you're modulating two, but these dominant chords, as I mentioned, they're
very universal. They fall down a fifth and they can go to a major
or a minor chord. So the example that I used
to give to my students, when I was demonstrating a one chord going
to a dominant five, and then back to one was this. Here's a pencil.
That is me stating to some effect I'm going to
do something with the pencil. So that's like C majors
heard at this point. Now I'm lifting up the pencil. There's a bit of tension here. Why is he lifting up the pencil? What's he going to do? This is the tension of the
G dominant cord. And then at some point, boom, the pencil falls back down. That is the dominant
cord falling back down the fifth
to a resolution. So again, there's lots of analogies and lots
of ways that we can think about these harmonic
movements and modulations. And so I want to make sure
that I make as many of these analogies available
to you as possible, because for some people, one
analogy might work well, whereas other people, it
might be a different analogy that makes them have
that sort of aha moment. So at this point, we've
already modulated into all the doors that
were available to us. Different versions
of those doors. The D minor door is
now a D major door. We can still find our way in. And we talked about the
doors that are behind us. The ones that are a little
bit less accessible. These are up on the black keys, right when we're modulating to keys that don't
quite make sense, but it's still available
because that ring of keys that I have as a
janitor is massive, and there's almost always some way to get into
any one of these doors. Now, don't forget
there is going to be a PDF available where I will show you all the dominant seventh chords in all 12 keys, and I'll even give you examples
of where they resolve to. So if I give you a G
dominant seventh chord, you'll have all the
notes available, but I'll also show you that it resolves to C major or C minor. This is meant to act as a quick reference if you
need it, but again, I would highly
recommend internalizing as much of this
information as possible. Practice a one, five, one in all your major
and minor keys, and then start to
use these fives to modulate to new keys. Now, if you are taking lessons, don't forget to work
with your teacher on this concept as you're going to get so much mileage out of these dominant
seventh chords. This class was pretty dense, so feel free to watch it over as many times
as you need to. I'll see you in the next class.
6. viidim (Diminished 7th Chords): Oh. Next up, let's talk about
diminished seventh chords as our modulator. Again, if we go through
the key of C major, we'll notice that
the seventh note supplies us this
diminished chord. A diminished chord is built off of three semitones
or a minor third, followed by another
three semitones or an additional minor third. The diminished
seventh chord adds an additional three semitones
or another minor third. In this case, we have a B
diminished seventh chord or a B diminished chord. The diminished seventh chord has a bit more tension
So we're going to be using those
chords to modulate. Now I will supply
a PDF that goes through all of the diminished
seventh chords available. But keep in mind, diminished
chords are notated weird where there's a
combination of sharps and flats, sometimes even things
like double sharps. Just keep in mind,
they might look a little bit weird on the page, but you'll have them
as a reference. The sound of a diminished chord is not inherently very major. It's like the spookier
side of minor. More often than not,
diminished seventh chords will resolve to a
minor resolution, but there's nothing
saying that they have to. Like dominant chords, they can resolve to a major
or a minor chord. But in this case,
we're not falling down a fifth for our resolution. Instead, I want you to think of diminished seventh chords as little pieces of scrap
metal beside magnets. In the key of C,
C is our magnet. Everything wants
to pull back to C. This B diminished chord wants
to pull us up to C. Again, you take a piece of scrap metal and put it right
beside a magnet, and it's going to quickly zip over to that magnet and connect. In fact, even in
classical music, the seventh node of a scale
is called the leading tone. It leads our ear. Up to that do. This is the leading tones chord. Of course, it would make
sense that it would pull us back to that root
C. As I mentioned, these diminished seventh
chords can resolve to a major or a minor sound
up one semitone, but you'll see them
more often than not resolving to a minor sound. After all, if we are to consider this additional note
that we've added, this G sharp or A flat, that's not coming from C major. Where is that coming from? It's available in our A
harmonic minor scale. Again, we are accommodating
the harmony of this diminished seventh chord within our harmonic minor scale. Of the notes available in this
diminished seventh chord, three of them relate to
my home key C major, but all four of
them can relate to, in this case, C harmonic minor. We have a B, D, F, and A flat, sure enough, from our harmonic minor scale. If we take the B, the
A flat, F, and the d, we can see, we
have all the notes that we need for that
diminished seventh chord. So three of the four notes
are common to our major key, four of the four notes are
common to our minor key, so we're going to lean to the preference of
resolving to minor, but it still works for major, just maybe not quite
as convincingly. So this chord
progression of C minor to B diminished seven
back to C minor. Sounds pretty fine.
It's very spooky. It's like Halloween music. But we're going to now use these diminished seventh
chords as modulators. What's the rule for these
diminished seventh chords? As we've talked about,
metal beside magnet, they pull up one semitone. Similar to what we did before, where we were considering all the different doors
that we can go into, let's go through our ring of keys and choose a
little jagged key. This is the jagged sound of
the diminished seventh chord. These keys can still get us into all these
different doors. It's just going to
sound a bit different. Let's just demonstrate
modulating to a couple of the
different keys available. I'll modulate to one minor key, as well as one major key that would be available
within C minor. Again, where in the
dominant seventh class, we really talked about C major as our home key.
Let's mix it up. We're going to talk about
C minor as our home key, not only just to give you a different key to
be thinking about, but again, diminished harmony relates to the minor
sound just a bit more. The chords available to us
are C minor D diminished. We're not going to modulate
to a diminished sound. It's the idea of having tension and then
falling onto tension. Similar to the B diminished
door that we put the big chains over and we
don't want to go into for now, we're not modulating
into a diminished sound. There is something
called prolonged tension that we can talk about later, but for right now, we want
to modulate to safe sounds. Our next cord available
is E flat augmented. Again, we're not
going to modulate to any sound other than
major and minor sounds. Chain that door for now. We have F minor, G major, A flat major B
diminished and C minor. Again, let's modulate to one
minor key and one major key. The doors we're going to select, the keys we're going to select
are going to be F minor, followed by a flat major. So let's get into the
sound of C minor, like we did before with C major. We'll play a 151. So we can hear the
sound of our dough. Let's modulate to F minor
using E diminished, a semitone below, and the scrap metal
pulls to the magnet. So again, we have to
consider our destination. If it's F minor, what
is down a semitone, and then just build
the diminished chord off of that sound. One, 51 and C minor, E diminished seven to F minor. And now it sounds like
we're settled in F minor. Next, let's try modulating
into a flat major. Again, we have 151 and C. What is the
semitoe below a flat? Well, it's G. Let's play
G diminished into a flat. Now, do you hear that
the modulation into a major key using this diminished cord doesn't
sound quite as convincing. Let me play it again, but I won't speak this
time. Check it out. It still works. It's just
not quite as convincing. Where dominant
chords fall a fifth to major or minor
sounds equally well, diminished chords pull up one semitone preferably
to a minor sound, but also works with
a major sound. There's something weird
about diminished chords. That is that they're
built off of three sees, three sees, minor th only. If I go up another
three semitones, I just have another B.
I'm back to my octave. If I start the same
process from D, go up three, go up
three, go up three, I have all the same notes, same with F and
same with G sharp. B diminished seven is
also D diminished seven, F diminished seven, and G
sharp diminished seven. That doesn't make sense
the first time you hear it, let that sink in, let it settle, discuss
it deeply with your teacher because it's a
bit of an abstract concept. But basically the notes for B diminished
seven are the same as D diminished seven
are the same as F N sharp diminished seven. You might see them reordered, but because of inversions, the idea that we can reorder
notes within chords. They're essentially all
the same sort of sound. So if the rule for diminished chords is that they can pull up one semitone to a major or
possibly a minor chord. Then that means this
chord can pull up a semitone from B to
C major or C minor, can pull up a semitone from D to D sharp major or D sharp minor. F can pull up a semitone to
F sharp, major or minor, and G sharp can pull up a
semitone to a major or A minor. Let's randomly select two of those destinations just to
show you how this works. Here's our chord Let's choose, if I'm in C minor, then F Sharp is a
pretty far removed key. Let's go to F sharp minor, and then as our other option, we'll go to A major. Let's start with F sharp minor. Let's start off with
a 151 in C minor. We're going to play B
diminished seven to modulate into F sharp minor. Now I called it B
diminished seven, but we're also thinking of
it as F diminished seven. Same set of notes. Pull up a semitone from F.
You get F sharp. Now, ultimately, after
I've given you a 151 in the key of C minor, the B diminished
chord is going to want to pull back to
C minor the most. While it can modulate to all those other keys
that I mentioned, it just won't be
quite as convincing, but it will still work, and it can keep your listener
on their toes. Let's try modulating to A major. This one's also a
pretty far removed key, so it's not going to be the most convincing, but it
will work still. Check it out. 151 and C minor. B diminished seven,
same as G sharp diminished seven to A major, bit of a fun pull into a major sound when
you lease expect it. In the PDF that I
provide for this class, I'm going to give you all 12 diminished seventh chord shapes, and I'm also going to mention all the keys that each of
those chords can resolve to. Now, it's also said
that something like a diminished chord can resolve to a minor chord
on the same route. And this partially comes from French romantic harmony
where diminished chords are used quite a bit instead of the more diatonic
chords available. What I'm talking about is
if we go back for a second, we're in C minor, we have this
B diminished seven shape. Now, again, that's
D diminished seven, F diminished seven and a
flat diminished seven. Because there's different
types of minor scales, in the key of C minor, F minor is a great
chord that's available. It comes from the
natural minor scale. If I'm choosing the
harmonic minor scale, I can also have an
F diminished chord. So in other words, if both
of those are available, let's say I have a
one, four, five, one in C minor, I could also choose one
diminished four, five, one. So the minor four and the diminished four are
interchangeable. Even though I'm not thinking
of C minor as my four chord, it still goes to show that
it's interchangeable with a diminished chord if we think
of this superimposition. While we're not
thinking of this C minor chord as a four chord, the theory still
remains that it can be interchangeable with
a diminished chord, but we might have
to think of it as a C minor chord from
a different key. In other words, if I'm
in C minor, one, five, one, now I'm going
to think of this, I'm already modulating
in my head, thinking this C minor is now
a four chord of g minor. If I change my C minor
to a c diminished, It'll modulate to G minor. And we can even see the C diminished seventh
chord has an F sharp. What's up a semitone? It's G, so we can go to G major or G minor
as our resolution. So when giving you all
the possible resolutions as to where these diminished
seventh chords can resolve, it's easiest to
understand that any of the four notes in
the diminished chord can resolve up one semitone. It's a little bit more
abstract to think that a diminished chord on C
could resolve to a C minor. But I wanted to show
you sort of where we're getting that concept
from within harmony. Now, if I'm being honest, one of my favorite things to do
in progressions is to use those diminished chords like the French romantic composers did in exchange for the two, the four, and the flat six. So one diminished
two, five, one, one diminished four, five, one, and one diminished 651. But anytime I play the four diminished or the
flat six diminished, I'm also aware of the fact
that the four can be minor, and the flat six can be major, so you can interchange. So the same thing could be true if we go up to the flat six. In C minor, the
flat six is A flat. A flat major in this case, but it can also be
a flat diminished. All of these notes
come from C minor, and all of these notes come
from C harmonic minor, so they are interchangeable. In other words, a
diminished chord could just change or resolve to a major
chord on the same route. A flat diminished seven
resolves to a flat. Now, is it truly a resolution? I don't see it that way. I see it as we have a
diminished seventh chord. And then all of a sudden, I'm changing it to a major chord. So now that major chord
functions as a flat six, and then you can use it within a progression that
you would usually use a flat six within. I know this theory
is getting deep. This is not a beginner course. So hopefully you're
following me so far. So again, we have a
diminished seventh chord, resolves to a major chord. We're thinking of
it as a flat six. So I would go five the one. Again, when you're resolving
a diminished seventh chord, like let's say a flat diminished
seven to a flat major, or F diminished seven to F minor where the
root stays the same. It's a partial resolution,
but generally, you want to be
thinking of things in the greater harmonic context. When I'm resolving
it to a major, I'm thinking of it more like a flat six chord from a minor key, and when it resolves to a minor, I'm thinking of it more like a minor four chord
from a minor key. Now, eventually, all
these rules get broken, but I want to give
you a starting point to be able
to think of this. I would say for now,
don't even worry about resolving a diminished chord
to the same root major or minor because there's an
extra layer of thought involved to be able to further
resolve it from there. For now, think of any diminished seventh
chord as resolving up one semitone from any
of those four notes, and it can resolve
to major or minor. But what's the
preference of the sound? Minor, because the
diminish is just so haunted that we can
get to a major chord, but it's like a huge mood shift. I think this class is
going to be the most dense out of everything
within this course. Diminished harmony is sort
of like the veins and nerves that run through
the body of harmony. These chords exist between all the notes within your scale. So in C major, if
you wanted to play a chord on any one of
these black notes, a diminished chord could
be a great choice. There's whole books written
on diminished harmony, but I wanted to talk about how they can be used in modulations. To wrap up this class, I'm going to give you a
couple more examples in different keys, and then
we'll wrap up from. Go into A minor, our
diminished seventh chord is going to be G sharp
diminished seventh. Let's pick one of
these four notes. Let's say D. I'm
going to resolve D up a semitone to D sharp,
let's say major. I'm modulating a
full tritone away from the root from a minor
chord to a major chord. This should be one of the most jarring
modulations you can have, but you'll see how
the diminished chord sets us up for success. Starting with 151 in A minor. Here's our diminished chord. Bit of a soft landing, but it took us a
bit to get there. Let's do another example. Let's go to D minor, which gives us a semitone down, C sharp, diminished seven. In this case, we're going to go let's go from D
minor to F major. This E in our chord can
pull up a semitone. Now we're going from the D
minor scale or Q to F major, and these are relative
major and minors. The diminished chord
is a great choice to get between those.
Let's try it out. D minor, 151. Here's our diminished
chord. To F major. Pretty convincing.
Lastly, let's give a major example.
We're in C major. Our diminished chord
available is B diminished seven or D or F or G
sharp diminished seven. Let's pull up a semitone
from G sharp into A, and we're going to move to A
minor. Now we've flipped it. We're starting in C major, and we're moving to the
relative minor key A minor. Let's try it out. We have C
major 151. Here's our chord. A minor, not too far
removed from C major. Lastly, for your theory nerds, I'm going to give you one of
the examples that I talked about where a diminished
chord can flip from diminished to
major or minor with the same root and then
further resolve from there. Let's do the example.
Where changing the diminished seventh chord to a major chord gets
us thinking about that major chord as the
flat six of a minor key. It's deep. I know it's
intense. Let's talk about it. So we have C minor. To G major back to
C minor, 15, one. Let's pull to C
diminished seven. And then to C major seven. This is the flat six, five of E minor. So C major is the flat
six chord of E minor. Flat 65, one, flat 651. So when I get to that C, I'm thinking of it as a flat six. One more time, one,
51 and C minor. C diminished, C major, dominant. Major E. Now, this concept
is harder to pull off, but it does give you this
idea that diminished chords can change on the spot
to major or minor. I would save that for
practice way down the line. It is more difficult, but
it's still totally doable. So as before, if you want to get into any of the doors
within your key, use a diminished chord
one semitone below. If you want to take any of those doors and
flip the tonality, maybe E flat major
becomes e flat minor. The same concept applies. Go down a semitone, play a diminished
seventh chord and it'll allow you to
unlock that door. Lastly, let's say
you're in A minor, Now, all these black notes, for the most part,
are not in a minor. So those are the doors
that are behind us. We can still get into any
one of these doors or keys. It's just a little bit of a tougher transition on the ears. Let's finish with one
of those examples. I'm in A minor, and
I want to modulate, let's say to C sharp minor. C sharp is certainly not one of the notes
available in A minor. In fact, it is the note that
would sound most major. So this is going to be an
interesting transition. We're going to start
with 151 in A minor. Semitone below our
destination would be C, C diminished into C minor. Again, without me talking. I sounds fine. Again, the
diminished seventh chord is going to be a bit jarring on the ears when the
listener first hears it, and that's part of the
reason why it works so well as a modulator because the
modulator is the tension, and the modulation,
the new destination is the resolution.
Talk about tension. The diminished seventh
chord is great for that, so it adds even more.
To the resolution. You could think of this
like a movie where if there's a villain and
they do some bad stuff, and then the hero ends up
defeating the villain, that's the tension
and the resolution. What if the villain got
away with a lot more? What if the villain was able to eliminate two of
the main heroes, decimate half of the
world or the universe? And then finally the hero is able to overcome
that villain. Well, that might represent the diminished seventh
chord really well, where the villain was able
to get away with a lot, and there was a
lot of tension in the story before the resolution. That's all I have to say about
diminished seventh chords and how they can be used
as harmonic modulators. For now, I'll see you
in the next class.
7. IV: Up next, let's get
talking about one of the softest
resolutions available as a harmonic modulation. Let's talk about
the four chord as a soft option as a resolution. I say a soft option
because some of these other options are really going to pull you
into this new key, whether you like it or not. The four chord is just
going to bring you there, but with a softer landing. The sound of a four chord going to a one chord,
in other words, a plag cadence is used
a lot in chic RMB sole. So there's certain styles where I think this
will work better. Now the type of four
chord that we're going to be selecting is a
major four chord. So this often works in
a major environment. In other words, when
you're modulating, you're going to likely be
modulating to a major key. Now, using C major
as an example. This is our one chord, and this would be our
two chord d minor, three quarter is E minor, and the four chord
would be F major. So what I'm saying is F
goes to see in a soft way. At the end of the day,
it really is Amen. Right, at the end of a church or Amen harmonized to
that sort of idea. So if you think of a five to one as a bit more commanding, this four to one
is a bit softer. That's what I was
referring to with it being a softer cadence. Quite often in a
four to one cadence, we wouldn't play them
in root position. In fact, the four chord would likely be in
second inversion, keeping the C on the
bottom in this case, and then resolving to C major. I'm going to recommend
for now that you take this approach with this
particular type of modulation. Otherwise, it's just
going to feel like major chords are jumping around. This use of an inversion grounds the new root down on the bottom, plus we've heard this
sound. So many times. Again, from church music
to soul to the blues. So it's just something
that our ear is very comfortable
hearing at this point. So let's try out one
of these modulations. I'm going to get
your ear grounded in C. I'm going to play
one, four, five, one in C major, that I'm going to
modulate to another key that's not really
related at all. E major. We're going to go into
a key with four sharps. You'll see we get there, like we get to E major, but this soft landing might
feel a little bit less convincing than the
diminished modulations or the dominant
chord modulations, just because there's not so much tension before the resolution. Again, it's a bit softer.
So let's try it out. So we're starting
on one to four, five back to one in C
major. Let's sd out. We're going to modulate to E, so we have this
inversion of A major, taking us to E and then back. Okay, another 4141 and C major. So as you can see
in major examples, this works pretty well. It's a very bright sunny
sort of modulation. But again, there's just a
little bit less tension before that resolution. I'm going to go through
a few keys randomly. And you'll see there is
just like any modulation, this initial twisting point
of, like, what's going on? And then there's a resolution. So I'm just going to go through a few modulations
totally randomly. You'll see it keeps us in
this major environment. There is that initial twisting point of,
like, Okay, wait, what's this new ord,
but then there is that soft landing
into the new key. Let's try it out. I'm
just going to be playing fours to ones in different
keys. Let's try it. So, we're in C.
Let's go to e flat. Let's go to F now.
How about to D? Okay. So you probably
wouldn't make a song based on four to
one in a certain key, and then four to one
in a different key, and then four to one
in a different key, and then continue with that. But I just wanted
to show you, even if we stack these
back to back and put them in their
most vulnerable sort of environment, they still work. So if you're writing
a major song, you're looking for a soft
solution as your modulation, I would recommend get
comfortable with a four to one. After all, in classical music, you're five to one is a very commanding force
to bring you back to one, and four to one is
a good alternative. So we're using these
as jumping points for two of our main modulations,
a dominant five, going to a major
or a minor one or a major four to a
major one resolution. Another thing I want to
add is that when you're modulating using
this four to one, In the key that
you're moving to, you can either keep the
left hand on the one for both of those
chords or four to one. An example would be again, C major in two E major. C major, let's say it's
one, four, five, one. Now, your ear is grounded in C. So here's my two options. I could play A in the left, which is the four of E, and then pull into the E. Again, second inversion root is a great way to voice the
chords in the right hand, but I could also keep E in
the base that whole time, which would sound like this,
back to C one, four, 51. Here we go, E in the base with
a major in the right hand, E in the base with E major. In the base with A major, then E in the base with E major. Okay. So you can either
have the base moving four to one or sort
of a one to one. Now, this one to one,
this idea of E in the left hand with A
major in the right hand. This is referred to
as a slash chord. It would be A major slash
And in the next class, we're going to get
talking about one of my favorite slash chords. I'll save it for that class, but I just wanted to kind of mention what a slash chord is, and that that's available as an option with this
four to one modulation. But again, in the next class, we're going to go through one of my favorite slash chords. This class is a little
more short and sweet, so that's all I
have to say about the four chord as a modulator. Let's jump into the next class, where we're going to
dive into something a little bit more unique.
I'll see you there.
8. LA V: So we've talked about
the five going to a one or the four going
to a one as a modulation. Now, both of these
works so well that we can actually
combine them together. We're going to be talking
about a particular type of slash chord called
the LA five C chord. This LA five chord is a special
type of five chord that was used in tons of different productions
in LA in the 80s. While it works really
well for, like, a sort of musical
theater sound or almost an Elton John composing for the Lion
King sort of sound, you can also use it
in a lot of types of sole, RMB, neosle. And if you jazz it
up even further, it can be used in hip hop
jazz, tons of other styles. Let's get talking about
this LA five chord. Now, if our left hand
was to play a five to one in C, as you can hear, there's a very great
commanding force bringing us back to C. But
what if in my right hand, instead of a five to one, I played a four to a one. Well, now what I have
is my four chord at the same time as my left
hand playing as five. Do you recognize that sound? Sometimes it'll go It's
just a beautiful sound. There's really not
much conflict. It's very colorful,
but it's tense enough that it works really
well before a resolution. Now, let's just stay
and see for a second. I'm going to play
one, four, five, one, and then I'm going to play an LA five bringing you back to one. We're not modulating. I just
want to show you how it sounds in context within a
key. It would sound like this. One, four, five, one.
Here's the LA five. Again, I'm always reminded
of Elton John's music. I think he uses a lot of these, but there's just something very bright and sunny about it, and it works really well at
the end of a progression, similar to what I just played. Now, let's again modulate to a key that doesn't
really make sense. Let's go from C
major to E major. In E major, B is our five
and A major is our four. So this is the or we're
going to be using to bring ourselves to
E. Let's try it out. I'm going to play 14, five, one in C. Then I'm going
to play the L A five of E major taking us in to
E major. Let's go for it. That's fun because the
C major drops down to B in the left hand and the
right hand gets a C sharp. It's like the C is splitting by semitones from C to C
sharp and B and by itself. It sounds really bad.
But check it out. Sounds great. Again, it's another really great modulator when you're in a
major environment. This chord doesn't naturally
resolve to a minor chord. It's also really
bright and sunny, so that would be super
conflicted, having this sound. Then if you're really wanting to twist and turn your
audience's perception of the piece that
you're working on, then maybe that's some
option available for you. I wouldn't be that
adventurous personally. I think it's a little
to pull on one arm, pull on the other
for the listener. But I think at the same
time you can be as adventurous as you want with
any of these modulations, I'm just giving you a
framework to get started. I'm going to recommend
that you try this in a major modulation environment. So let's do the same
thing that we did in the last class,
where in this case, I'm playing an LA five to a one, and then a totally different
L A five to a different one. And one other thing I want to mention is, this
is a slash chord. What we're calling this
is a four slash five. The four chord is in the right
hand or it is the harmony. Slash five means
five in the base. So in the last class, I mentioned that I
was going to show you one of my favorite.
Slash chords. If you're not comfortable
calling it the LA five, you could call it
a four slash five. Same sort of idea. Let's go into it a few modulations
back to back, starting in C. I
sound like this. Flat? Let's go to
A. L et's go to D. Using this modulation is
going to give you a really fun, sunny, colorful sound. Again, this works really
well in musical theater, pop productions, and generally, anything that would
work well with a plagal cadence, like RMB, so, church music,
whatever it might be, you're going to find
that this can work as a cool alternative. We've taken the idea of the five to one and the four to one, and we smashed them
together and we got our LA Now this class
and the last one, we were staying very much
in a major environment. If I'm being honest, a lot of the music that I write is minor. So for the next two classes, we're going to be talking about some fun minor modulations, and these are actually two of the modulations
that I would say I use the most next to a dominant chord modulation
like five to one. So stay tuned in the next class, we're going to get
a little bit minor. I'll see you there.
9. iv6: Next up, let's get talking
about the minor 46 chord. I'm going to refer
to it sometimes as a fancy four because it's
a bit of a mouthful. So when I'm saying fancy four, what I'm referring to is a minor chord with a
tone above the top note, it's a major six, but we're
just calling it a six. Now, this chord is not
just found anywhere. It's a very particular
type of chord that's found in a very particular
spot within a key. And let's talk about that. So if I'm in C minor, Here's my set of notes
for C natural minor. As you can see, the minor
one chord, C minor. If I go to the sixth note, it's actually a flat
six, it's A flat, and this sound by itself
can be quite tense. It sounds a bit like a major seven chord in first inversion. Well, it sounds exactly like that because
that's what it is. But played blocked, there's
quite a bit of tension. Now, broken, You get a bunch of marvel themes and superhero movies and
that sort of stuff. But we're looking
for it to sound resolved when we land on it. Now, there is one other
minor chord within C minor. It's the four chord, F minor. And on this chord, if
I add a six to it, actually a tone up from the top note instead
of a semitone, giving a bit of a softer sound. It's very mysterious.
It's very minor. It's the sound of
Chopin and List and WC, and a lot of these French
romantic composers. So when we say this
minor 46 chord or the fancy four, that's
what we're referring to. And what I love about this
six is for the longest time, I was really obsessed
with minor nine chords. So in C minor, having a D up on top. And what's cool is you
can keep that D on top player four chord, and it still keeps a lot of the characteristic of the nine, but just kind of from
a different context, And then we're back to that
one chord with that nine. So here it is back and forth. It's a really beautiful sound. So in context, if I was
playing C minor to F minor, let's make it fancy,
we're going to add that six on
it. And then back. Now, listen to how that
six this D resolves so well up to E flat. Keep that in mind because
we're going to be talking about that as we get
into our modulations. Now, this is something
called voice leading. Where did the notes
of one chord want to move to get to the
notes of the second chord? Sure, I could just
play a root position, F minor with a six, and to a root position, C minor. But it's not quite as
convincing to the ear as the proper voice leading. In other words, not
moving the notes much, think about singers, moving the minimal
distance to get from one chord to the next
chord, that sort of idea. Quite often as pianists, we get thinking of our chords
as these big chunky shapes, but you want to
be thinking about the individual
voices of the chord, almost like a choir coming together to sing the
different notes, so the chord is heard, or the brass section
within a big band, or the string section within
an orchestra, same idea. Every instrument is moving
just a little bit to help the whole context sound like
a new chord is emerging. In the case of this
minor 46 to one, the six quite often
wants to resolve up a semitone to the third or the minor third
of your one chord. Let's play a 141 and C minor. We'll go fancy on the four. And then once I come
back to the one, I'm going to slap a six on it, and you'll see it
helps us modulate down a quarter because
at the end of the day, these fancy four chords
are four chords. If a four wants to go to a one, that means we're modulating down a quarter. Let's give it a try. One, fancy four one's a a
six Now we're in G minor. How smooth is that? It almost doesn't even feel
like a modulation, but that's what you
get when you use proper voice leading
with good modulators. So we can turn this
all into an exercise, and I am going to
include a PDF for this class of this exercise.
So let's talk about it. So if we just start with
C minor in both hands, I'm going to put a six on top. Now it's acting like a four, a four of which key, in this case, G down a quarter. But I talked about the voice
leading of this top note, the six, wanting to
go up a semitone. So we'll play an
inversion of G minor so that we get the sound of that
six going up a semitone. Once you've played
that inversion, we'll jump down to a new root position version
of that chord. We had C minor C minor six, g minor second inversion
down to G minor. Now we're going to add
a six on the G minor. Where does that take us
down a quarter to d minor? Let's use an inversion
to smooth that out, and then we'll drop down to the root position
of that chord. Now we're adding
a six on d minor, which takes us to a minor. Again, we'll use an inversion. And then jump down
to a root position. Now I'm going to be including
all 12 keys within the PDF. Every time you modulate, you're modulating down a oar, but I wanted to include these
inversions so you can see how voice leading can help
smooth out this modulation. So what I love about
this modulation is anytime you're playing
a minor one chord, you can put this six on top
and modulate down a oar. But what's so great
about that is you're essentially leaving a
trail of breadcrumbs, in that once you're
down a quarter, it's really easy to get
back to your home key. Here's why. C minor. We're
putting a six on it. We're modulating
down to G minor. Sounds fine. But what if we just made this g minor g dominant? That's a five of C minor. Now we're back to C minor. Same example, but
we'll do it in g minor this time. I'm in G minor. Let's play a 151 to get
your ears in G minor. Now we're adding the six.
That brings us to D minor. D dominant. Now we're
back to G minor. So if you do take a
minor one cord and you slap a six on it and
modulate down a fourth, it's really easy to come
back to that home key. Lastly, I want to mention, you can jump to totally random keys. In the analogy of all the doors and all the keys to get
into those different doors, we could go into one of
the doors behind us, one of the ones that's
a little bit harder to get to and a little bit less related to the room that we're currently in or the
key that we're currently in. So as an example,
I'm in C minor, and I want to go
to A flat minor, which is very jarring, I would use the four
of A flat minor, which is D flat minor six. Let's try that. It's going to be jarring when I get to
that D flat minor six, but the resolution is what really matters.
Let's try it out. One, five, one in C minor
to ground your ear. Here we go modulating. Oh. When I went here to the modulator, it's
like, What is he doing? And then Okay. So I
think as a composer, it's a little bit
like a trust fall where if you've set up your listener a few times with these modulators and they're
like, Oh, what's that sound? Doesn't sound right? Oh,
he went to the right spot. The more you do that, the more adventurous you can get
with your modulations, because your audience
starts to trust you and where you're going to go with those sounds that sound
a little bit off. So that is one of my favorite
sounds to use when I'm improvising or composing
minor compositions, which is generally what
I like to compose. I love the sound of
French romantic music, and I will be doing full courses on French romantic harmony. But as a modulator, this fancy four or minor four with a six
sounds fantastic. So I use that sound
all the time, and now you can, as well. I hope you enjoyed the
sound of that modulator, and I'll see you
in the next class.
10. ii7b5: L et's get talking
about the minor seven flat five or half
diminished seven chord. This sound was used a
ton in the romantic era, especially by French composers. The idea is if you
take a minor chord, like A minor and add a flat seven we would
have a minor seven chord. If we go through A minors chords with this
extra skip on top, we're going to get
some reliable jazz, on C, we get a C
major seven on D, we get a D minor seven. But that second chord That's what we're
talking about here. This is like a B minor seven, but it doesn't have
an F, it has an F, the fifth has been flattened, hence, B minor seven flat five. So we can think of it
like B three semitones, up three semitones,
up three semitones. But instead of this
diminished seventh on top, we're going to use
the minor seventh. So it's not a fully
diminished seventh chord, it is a half diminished
seven chord. So minor seven flat five
or half diminished seven, that's how we're going
to refer to this chord. Now, again, if we go back to a minor and go through all these
chords that are available, Where was the minor
seven flat five? It was built off of the
second scale degree. So we want to think of
this chord as a two chord. Now, generally, how do we
use two in a progression? Well, thinking
from jazz harmony, 251 is one of the most
common chord progressions, and in jazz, it's
almost exclusively the harmony that helps
shape the sound of jazz. So while we are
talking about jazz, we're lending this idea of 251 being a very
good predominant? In other words, before the
five chord progression. We have two, which is coming
before the five predominant. Five, which is
dominant in this case, and then to a minor one. It might go without
saying at this point, but this minor seven flat
five chord is going to be used as a modulator
to a minor chord. First, let's just hear
the sound of this 251, one more time in a minor,
without me talking. I'll start with a one
and then the 251. Sounds great. Again, it very much has that French
romantic sound. What's really cool about this is similar to the last class. Let's say we have one, five, one in C minor. We can just take this minor
one chord and change it. In the last class, we change
it to a minor six chord. In this case, we're
going to change it to a minor seven flat five. We'd have C minor
seven flat five, again, that sound is jarring. On, one, the jarring
sound of a modulator. But then, We've
modulated down a tone. You can take the minor
one chord of whatever key you're in and just change it
to a minor seven flat five. Now it's the two of whatever
key you're modulating two. One, five, one, minor
seven flat five, built off that same one, built off the C, five F seven. To a one. Now, taking
your minor one chord, changing it to a minor
seven flat five, and then modulating to the
appropriate key down one tone, is perhaps the easiest way to modulate using this
particular chord. But what's really cool
about it is it's very close to a lot of other
types of seventh chords. A minor seventh chord, if you take the fifth
and flatten it, now you have a minor
seven flat five. A major seventh chord, if you raise the
root up a semitone, now you have a minor
seven flat five, and a dominant seventh chord, if you take the two middle noes and lower them a semitone, You get a minor seven flat five. So let's use all three of
those instances within some progressions
to show you how we can modulate with
those little shifts. First, we're going
to play a two, five, one in C minor, by adding some sevenths
to all the chords. D minor seven flat
five, which is the two, g dominant seven,
that's our five, C minor seven, that's our one. Then we'll take C minus seven
and flat and the fifth, and then we're set up for a new 251 of B flat minor.
Let's try it. I'll start with a one chord, so we have C minus seven. D minor seven flat
five G dominant seven back to C minor
seven flat and fifth, two, five, one of B flat minor. Again, adding a minor seven
to that B flat minor. Let's now try a major 251, also in C, and then I'll
raise the root a semitone. This is a really sneaky
modulation. Check this out. Two, five, one. Raise the bottom not a semitone, two, five, one of B minor. So we've modulated down a
semitone. One more time. Very cool. Again, with
the dominant court, we can take the middle two notes and lower them a semitone. This might be good
if you're doing like a one, five, 15, 15, and then you want to change that five to modulate.
Let's try that out. So 151. Five, one. Five. Let's lower
those middle notes. So in that case, I went from C minor to F minor.
So up a fourth. So we've gone through a modulation using this
chord down a semitone, down a tone, up a fourth. It has a lot of possibilities in terms of taking basic chords, making a small shift, so it becomes a minor 755 chord, and then we do our modulation. But again, like all
the other examples, we can just jump to a
totally random key. C minor to A flat
minor has been in my examples so far because
they're very unrelated keys. If you just hear them back back, pre cinematic, but it's
not a usual shift. So that's where
we're going to go, and that's going to require us to play a B flat
minor seven flat five. We're going to start
in C minor with a 151, and then we will modulate 251 into A flat minor.
Let's go for it. One, five, one. There's our 251 and A flat. Now, I kind of want to do a chromatic descending
base sort of thing here. Let's try one more time
with that. So we have one. Five, one, That helps
smooth it out a little bit. So case by case, you'll
have to ask yourself, how can I make this a little bit less jarring of a transition, or in some cases, maybe
you want that zone. Maybe you want to really take
your audience by surprise. So similar to the last class, the minor 46 chord, this chord, I use a lot. And the way that I
use it tends to be if I'm in C minor and
C minor is my one, I'll just shift it
straight up to a minor seven flat five,
still built on C, knowing that that sets up a 25, one of a new key. Also similar to the last class, I will be providing a
PDF for this class, where we're going to go
through all 12 keys, playing a minor chord. C changing it to a minor
seven flat five, 25, one into a new key, minor seven flat five, 25, one of a new key. And as you probably
notice the five chords, I'm going to be
using an inversion. It just helps smooth
out the voice leading. So whether you're using this
modulation within one of your compositions
or an improvisation or a music production, I hope you have fun with it. It's a really fun sound. Again, it very much sounds
like French romantic music. So if you like
Chopin and List and some of the other big
composers from that era, then you will love this sound. That's it for this class.
I'll see you in the next one.
11. Prolonged Tension: So I want to talk to
you about something called prolonged tension. Prolonged tension is
where we have a chord or some sort of tense
sound happening, and we prolong it. We keep it tense
before we resolve. And there's one really,
really great way to do that using diminished chords
and dominant chords. So I want to bring something
to your attention. Anytime you're using
a diminished chord, This sound very much relates
to dominant seventh chords. After all, a dominant
seventh chord is a five, let's say we're in C
minor five to one, five to one, so G
majors are five. But it also has on
the top three notes, the diminished chord built off of the seventh scale degree. You put those two
chords together, you get a dominant
seventh chord. Again, this diminished sound relates to the dominant
seventh sound. So much so that if we take a diminished seventh
chord and we lower any one of those
four notes by a semitone, you get a new dominant
seventh chord, usually in an inversion. The resolution options for the dominant chords and the diminished
chords are the same. Let's talk about it in
detail so you can use this device for
prolonged tension within your modulations. As we've discussed before, diminished chords have plenty
of places they can resolve. For right now, let's
just talk about resolving to minor chords. So diminished seventh
chords or diminished chords in general tend to
resolve a semitone. Because any diminished
chord represents four different diminished chords because they have
the same notes, you can resolve pasemtone from any one of
these four nodes. Again, if this is confusing, go back to the class on
diminished modulations and it should help
sort things out. But breezing over
it a little bit, This chord can resolve epi
semitone from C to C sharp, semitone from E flat to E, semitone from F sharp to g, or pisemtone from A to B flat. The four options we have in this minor environment would be modulating to C sharp minor, E minor, g minor,
or B flat minor. Try your best to remember
that because in a second, we're going to talk about how the dominant chords will also
take us to those four keys. If I take this diminished
chord, and like I said, I can lower any one
of these four notes, I'm going to lower the
bottom note first down to a B that gives us which chord. B dominant seven. And where does B
dominant seven go? It goes down a
fifth in this case, to E, and we'll play E minor. But remember, this
diminished chord, E minor was one of the options. So we lowered the
semitone and it's just another way to
get to that E minor. We've prolonged the tension with a diminished chord and then
a dominant chord still tens, and then to E minor. I could also lower
this node here, E flat down to a D, where it is D dominant
seven take us, this is third
inversion keep a mine, but it's D dominant
seven, just the same. Takes us down a fifth
from D down to G, and in this case,
we'll play G minor. Again, from this
diminished chord, G minor or G major, but G in general was one of
our options as a modulation. Next, I'm going to lower
the F sharp down to F, that gives us F dominant seven, which would take us to B flat. Again, B flat was one of our options also from
the diminished chord. We get this to this
to this to B flat. Then lastly, I can lower the
top note A down to A flat, A flat dominant seven, takes us to D flat. And lastly, yet again, this C was showing us in the diminished chord that
we can move to this D flat. Whether you're
using C diminished seven to move to D
flat minor semitone. You can also lower that
top note in this case. To a dominant chord to
take you to D flat minor. While there's other
ways that you can use prolonged tension, this is one of my favorites, taking a diminished chord
and turning into a dominant, and the reverse can
be true as well. We take B dominant, raise the bottom
note a semitone. And then we can
still modulate to E using that diminished chord. So this is a totally reversible
process, but quite often, I'll go from diminished to
dominant and then resolve. That's just a
personal preference, but keep in mind it
does work both ways. To me, this class feels
like a bonus class, just in that we're
using two chords kind of back to
back to modulate. But this idea of
prolonged tension had to be mentioned because
as a general concept, it does get used
quite a bit in music. So continue to explore diminished seventh chords,
dominant seventh chords, and the other chords
that we've talked about within this course
to see how you can use prolonged tension within your compositions
and chord progressions. Whether you're taking a
diminished seventh chord and shifting it
into a dominant or a dominant seventh chord
and shifting it into a diminished seventh chord as a way of using
prolonged tension, I hope you can get a lot of
use out of this technique. I've used this technique
plenty of times, and now you can, too, I'll see you in the next class.
12. Outro: So that's it, you
made it through the full course on
harmonic modulations. At this point, you should have a pretty good
understanding of how to navigate moving from
one key into another key. Whether that's in
a large context, like a sonata, a
smaller context, like a rock song, and the various sections that
you can move between, like choruses versus, et cetera. Even using these in the smallest context of briefly variating a
chord progression, just to spice it up
a little bit more. There's lots of different
types of tension that you can have to pull between
these different keys. Dominant chords tend to
be pretty forgiving. Diminished chords are a
little bit more jarring, and some of the other
examples that I've given you are a little bit
more style specific. Ask yourself which sound you like the most throughout
these courses. If you really like the sound of the four chord as a minor six, that's one of my preferences, then try using that
a little bit more. That particular one
will give you a bit more of a French
romantic sound, but that's not to say
that you can only use it in that genre and
within that context. I want to congratulate you for gettingthrough this
course because this is certainly not one of the easiest courses
I've put together. Now, these tricks are
going to work really well for producers
and composers, because from the earliest
stages of writing a song, you'll be able to work in these modulations so that they fit within a full band context or within a full
music production. Now, if you're a solo pianist, you don't have to worry
about the bassist and the guitarists lining up with these modulations at
the same time as you. You can use them
whenever you want. You can use different types of modulations within
an improvisation. And admittedly, this is one
of my favorite use cases for this technique for
these modulations is when I'm
improvising on piano, and I either want to spice
things up between sections of my improv or take a
chord progression that I've established and variate
it a little bit more. Now, don't forget, you do have two options for your
class project where you can either apply
these modulations to a more small context, like chord progressions
or to a bigger context, like within a full song
and navigating between different sections of that
song using these modulations. I could go into more detail right now, but I've
already done that. So make sure that if
there's any confusion around the course project, you go back to the
class that specifically outlines all the details
for that project. If you'd like to learn a little bit more about me, my music, and my backstory,
you can head over to Cook hyphen Music dot. This is my personal
website where you can view my portfolio and
a whole lot more. On YouTube, you can find me at youtube.com slash at
Cook Hyphen Music. Right now, my main
project is creating a bunch of course material for students all
around the world. But eventually, I do want to
grow that YouTube channel. So if you were to
subscribe to it, I would be so thankful. Also, on social media, Instagram and TikTok, you can find me at Let's Cook Music. Posts on social media or
anything from technical tips to performances to some family and friends stuff, and
everything in between. Also, if you don't yet have a private music
instructor to help you dive deeper into some of the material
within my courses, I do run a music school, and you can find out more
about it at cook Music school. So whether you're looking for
a teacher to help you with the technique and theory of something like classical
or baroque music, rock or Funk or
music production, mixing and mastering, I have
teachers that can help you. Now, I want to
finish with saying the way that I got the most out of these harmonic modulations was from really playing
around with them. Even just taking a
simple chord progression that's two or maybe
three chords, and trying different modulations
within that progression, maybe modulating to
the second chord or modulating to
the third chord of the progression and using different types of modulations
to get to those spots. The idea is to have
fun with all this. Saturate in the sound of these different modulations
so that you can either identify when
another musician is using one of them or
preemptively know, that's the modulation I want to use in this part of the song before you've even heard it because you've
practiced it so much. Think if I say modulation one more time, my
head might explode. So here's probably a
good time to finish. I want to thank you for taking this course. I hope
you had some fun. I hope you can apply
this material, ASAP, and I'll see you
in the next course.
Josh Cook, A Sound Experience
