16
The scale/chords are good clues to the key of a song, but at least as important is the tonal center. That's not as easy to define but generally it's where the song comes back to a place of less musical tension.
IMHO the chord played when the song in question returns to a "rest" state is A major. Which means I would say the song is in A and the ...
16
It's a secondary dominant. As such, it can be used to move to its own tonic, in this case, A minor. Other secondary dominants in key C are B7, leading to Em, and A7, leading to Dm. Both the Dm and Em are diatonic chords in key C.
There are also C7, which is non-diatonic, to lead to F, and D7, leading to the dominant G. So, the dominant of the dominant, or V/...
7
It's true that piano doesn't offer the similarity between chord shapes that guitar does, though that's not true of all chords (i.e., those that have open strings). To play the same progression in multiple keys on guitar will also frequently involve rearranging patterns a bit.
Anyhow, advanced pianists often spend a lot of time practicing patterns in ...
6
As mentioned in (the original version of) Tim's answer, it's indeed a secondary dominant, but I'd like to add that the resolution E7 to F is a specific resolution called deceptive resolution, and it occurs a lot, in almost any style of music. Note that F major and A minor share two out of three chord tones, so it's not so surprising that this type of ...
5
You've picked an extreme example! Outside a theory test paper, a diminished 3rd is more likely to look like this. Maybe within a dom7+5 chord.
5
A complete song need not be just in one key, and stay in that key throughout. I guess that's one good thing about relative key signatures - they are identical.
There are many songs which may be in relative major for the verse, and move to relative minor for the chorus - or vice versa. There are many songs which move between the two relatives during the verse/...
5
E (or E7) is the dominant of the relative minor of C major. Therefore very much 'home territory'. Not diatonic, but pretty darn close!
And E leads well to F because all three notes move up by a semitone. Like leading notes do.
I have a theory of 'honorary diatonic' chords that include (in C major context) E and E7, B♭, C7 and Fm (when used in the cliche ...
5
It's definitely a real chord!
The Roman numerals indicate the root of the chord, and the Arabic numerals next to it tell us the inversion; we call these latter numbers "figured bass."
A "6" in the figured bass indicates a first-inversion chord, and thus the chordal third will be in the bass. A "64" indicates a second-inversion ...
3
The important thing is to distinguish chord roots from bass tones. Roots are the tone upon which chords are built by stacking thirds. The bass is any chord tone placed into an octave to make it the lowest tone. When the root is not the bass, the chord is called inverted.
A visual in notation should help...
...Chord roots in blue, chord thirds in green, and ...
3
As mentioned before, E or E7 in the key of C usually acts as a secondary dominant. It's the dominant of both A major and A minor chords. It's often used in progression like E-A-D-G-C (perhaps with some sevenths or minors instead of major chords here.) The other important case is E-a; in this case, it's the dominant of the relative minor. Moving between a key ...
3
Sometimes diminished thirds are respelled to make reading easier, but here's why it can be important to call a diminished third a diminished third.
This post contains three parts: 1) Helping to hear the intervals, 2) some examples of how they arise, and 3) some examples from compositions.
Notice that in all cases (shown here, at least), the diminished third ...
3
...Some kind of chromatic walk-down?
I think so.
Depends on the voicings and what you're reacting to that sounds "good."
I played...
xx0222
320002
2x2220
1x2210
020000
...to get a lot of half step movement.
In some cases you might call Fmaj in the key of D major borrowed or even a chromatic mediant depending on how it is used. Alternating D ...
3
Several answers already point out the importance of voicing and common omissions with 13th chords so I won't repeat those points.
...From my understanding, the notion of calling them 9, 11, 13, instead of 1, 3, 5, 7, 2, 4, 6, is telling users that those notes should be higher in pitch than the 7th note.
A few additional things you might want to know about, ...
2
If you (quite reasonably) define the chords that can be made from the notes of the C major scale as 'in the key', yes, chords that use other notes not in the scale are 'outside the key'.
But that's such an obvious answer, implicit in the question, that I think you may really be asking something slightly different. Are you wondering whether a D major chord ...
2
Yes, a chromatic walk-down. And that's a full and sufficient justification.
Always remember, the diatonic notes are a framework, not a restriction. And not every chord demands a scale.
2
Yes, it's a chromatic walkdown, and F major 7 is ♭III7, borrowed from the parallel minor. It's difficult to stick a functional label on that chord, but it's certainly valid to view the flattened third scale degree as leading to the second.
2
Seems to me the underlying scale under the Fmaj7 chord here is C major,
because this only changes 2 notes from the D major scale, C and F :
(C#) D E F# G A B C# (D) (D major)
(C ) D E F G A B C (D) (C major, D dorian)
This way you modulate from D major to D dorian
this gives your progression quite a good mood, coloring the major tone temporarily to a ...
2
The problem goes away if you consider D and Bm to be two sides of the same key. They have the same key signature. The Roman numeral analysis system - in the form you talk about - assumes that either the major or minor side is clearly more prominent, in order to assign number one to a scale degree. You should make a decision: do you want to subscribe to this ...
2
The song you quote with the bass line la,fa do,so and the chords Bm G D A can’t be identified as B minor or D major without listening to it.
vi IV I V is one possible solution referring to major (beginning on the 6th degree)
but this progression is ambivalent and it can be interpreted in Bm as i VI III bVII (b stands for the minor 7th degree of aeolian mode)...
2
The answer lies in which chord is used to finish the piece (or section thereof.) If a piece ends with V-I (with I being D major and V being A major for example), one would say that that section (or piece) is in D major. To end a piece in the relative minor (same key signature but that's just for notational convenience and not universally used during the ...
2
I think you shouldn't overstate the ease of guitar chords just because you can slide a non-open chord up and down the neck. That certainly is not the whole picture of playing chords on guitar.
Similarly don't discount the shape patterns that do exist on the keyboard. There are certain shapes that repeat like E, A & D major or Eb, Ab & Db major, etc.
...
2
In addition to Athanasius' great answer is the fact that virtually every chord change involves at least one note which is static.
I encourage students to know what that note is for any two chords, and move fingers to the changed notes. Simple example - triads C and F. Common note C. L.H. - C E G, hold on to C, move to C F A. Practise with C on top instead - ...
2
One thing to add to the secondary dominant/deceptive resolution thing is this: a dominant is a harmonically stable chord to end a phrase on (exluding the final ending.)
If the structure of the section is something like...
| ...Am E :||: F | C G | Am...
It may make more sense to describe the part before the double bar repeat a kind of incomplete, half cadence ...
1
The second degree of A is b-minor b,d,f#.
(ii6 = 1st inversion => d,f#,b). Bass note = D.
The numbers design the inversions. 46 = forth-sixth, 6 = 3rd-6th.
1
As others have pointed out, whether a song is in a major key or its relative minor is often a matter of debate or opinion. However, there are some clues that can point in one or other direction.
First, in specifically the harmonic minor there is a key difference, the raised leading note: thus here you would expect an A# in B minor but it would be difficult ...
1
There are already some short answers, I'll try a longer one.
You'd like to understand what happened. If you can do the following:
(1) deal with or operate in the situation adequately
(2) locate or recreate the situation at will
(3) identify similar situations in other contexts
(4) maybe even communicate and describe the situation to others
... then you &...
1
Basically, the diatonic chords would be those that fit the key signature. Although that is complicated in minor key music where accidentals are used to raise the seventh scale degree for dominant harmony and those dominant chords are generally considered diatonic in the minor keys.
So, your D major chord in the key of C major uses an accidental and would be ...
1
Music is culture, not a natural science, logic, measurements and calculations like you have in physics. You should approach this issue more like a language course than a math lesson. It's closer to "how to order a pizza" than "how to calculate the circumference of a pizza".
Saying something about the key of a song is more about the home ...
1
TL;DR
The root of the chord, as given, is B -- thus, a vii chord -- because the resolution of the outer voices dominates the sound.
How do we get to a Db (i.e., bII) chord?
Voice-leading "rules"
In the canonical teaching of functional harmony, there are rules about how certain intervals are required to resolve. In particular:
diminished intervals ...
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