8
If you are basing your harmony off of F minor, this chord progression makes a lot of sense especially wanting to use C major instead of C minor. This is very rooted in the traditional study of harmony by weaving though the 3 minor scales which are F natural minor, F harmonic minor, and F melodic minor which gives the following sets of notes:
F natrual minor ...
7
The 'middle 8', as in so many songs, is a jump to a slightly remote chord then a 'cycle of 5ths' sequence back to the tonic. But this time it hits the tonic and keeps on going! Bm7, Em7, Am7, D7, Gmaj7 (we're home) Cmaj7, F - then a side-slip back to the dominant (D7) and home (G). Nice, isn't it!
I could come up with some theory about bVII being a ...
5
I would say that E minor seems to be the clear prevailing tonality in this example. You have B chords going to Em chords, and that's quite common in minor (theorists call it harmonic minor when they raise the seventh note to the leading tone). Every note in the chords you wrote actually fits into E harmonic minor. Even the C minor chords have that E♭ = D♯ ...
4
No scale (I could find) contains those chords.
Well, one scale that definitely contains those chords is the chromatic (12-tone) scale. You're free to use all those notes in whatever way you want!
It's also likely that there's a way to see your progression in terms of diatonic scales too, if that's important to you. But to answer your question directly, If ...
4
Chord names relate to the root note of the chord, not the key. This makes sense and is helpful: it means a chord name always tells you exactly what intervals are in a chord; it means you can have chromatic chords within a key.
So, for instance, a #11 is always an augmented 4th above a root (or some octave displacement of this), no matter what the key or ...
3
Write the enharmonic equivalents of D# and A# (=Eb and Bb).
Then you have the progression V-bVII-IV-I. Eb is a borrowed chord of f-minor. (As the other chords are are sus4 we even don’t know whether they’re major or minor. But if you are soloing in f-minor, it will be f- minor - or you have blue notes in mind ...).
Is this o.k.?
Every pthing is o.k. ...
3
It is not quite clear to me what you are trying to do but I think you are transcribing or changing the progression to a minor key from a major. So, in C major the I and ii chords are C maj and D min. As 7th chords they'd be C Maj7 and D min7. All you need to do to get the correct chords in sequence in a major or minor key is look at the triads created by ...
3
Literal transposition from major to minor doesn't work very well. You have discovered one of the reasons.
You seem to think minor' just means 'natural minor'. There's the Harmonic and Melodic minor scales as well. Those non-flattened 6ths and 7ths are very useful options when attempting functional harmony.
3
This is not remotely a complete answer, but just a hint: There are many "flavours" of minor that you can mix and use in various combinations.
For example, try this. (And do try it now, if possible, before you read further, so the first impact is not influenced by the theoretical aspect)
Take your C minor scale, and see how it sounds over this progression: ...
3
The problem is that you cannot transpose from major to minor. You can observe the analogies and differences between parallel keys, but they are not supposed to work interchangeably.
Playing a sequence of chords in a key or mode does not guarantee you a similar effect in any other key or mode, because you are playing completely different notes.
Of course ...
3
I would just like to add something to Tim's answer.
I do not think it's good to think of natural minor in the way you do ("I'm going to flatten the 3rd, 6th and 7th degree"). I was taught to think of minor keys in terms of their relative majors, not their parallel majors, and I think it's a lot better, especially when you start to get into modes (natural ...
3
I think it works there because it is the end of the circle of 5ths (not necessarily all dominant, but the root movement anyway starting with the Bm7) , but the F chord (FAC), especially with the melody notes A and E are substituting for ii there in a ii V I progression going back to G. The F note acts as sort of a suspension resolving to the E. One has to be ...
2
It's a sharp eleventh above the chord root.
So with Fmaj9#11 you have a "sharp" eleventh. Notice the quotes. The sharp can be misleading, because it give the impression an actual sharp would be used to spell the chord. The default would be an 11 figure assumed to be a perfect eleventh. The # means raise it a half step.
But, what if the root were Bb and a ...
2
Augmented chords are good for key changes, as one set of notes can represent more than one augmented chord. Take C+. C E G♯. That's the same harmony as E+, E G♯ B♯. That's the same harmony as A♭+, A♭ C E. Three for the price of one!
Diminished chords get used in the same sort of way, too. Co, C E♭ G♭ B♭♭ ...
2
Without knowing the voice leading, rhythm, or anything about phrasing it's hard to say what will "work."
Em -> B7 -> B+ -> Cm -> B°7 -> Cm
The whole point of this seems to be leaving off the cadence in E minor and then chromatically shifting around to C minor. Omitting the Cm in the middle seems to help make that clearer.
Em B7/D# B7#5/D# B°7/D Cm
That'...
2
It's always going to be a compromise going from major to minor. Mainly beause minor consists of one change in the lower 5 notes of the minor scale - the 3rd, going major to minor. The defining note.
Still going up the scale(s) gives lots of options. In fact all the remaining notes chromatically! So you stating flatten the 6th and 7th doesn't have to be the ...
2
There are two parts to your question though that may not be obvious. First, "How does one compose in a minor key?" (even if only for a few bars). Second, "How does one re-write a given piece from a major to minor key?" The answer to the second requires answering the first.
Melodies are not generally too much a problem. One can often tell by ear whether one ...
2
You're correct, many of the commonly used guitar chord voicings aren't like the stereotypical simple stacks-of-thirds you may have learned from music theory. Some voices are doubled, the third, fifth, sixths, sevenths, ninths, ... basically every voice except the bass note can be ordered differently in different chord grips. The bass note is an exception, ...
1
If your root note is C, you could play the flamenco scale. Basically phrygian with an added major 3rd.
If your root note is F, you can use a mix of harmonic and melodic minor.
Anything is ok if you like the sound, there is no music police who will arrest you ;-)
1
Your thoughts are in the right place but you are over thinking it. There is an algorithm for building chords and that is independent of the Key that the cord is being used in. We always refer to the notes of the chord relative to a major scale starting on the root of the chord. As an example when we build the minor triad we don't say (1, 3, 5) on the ...
1
This works well, to my ear. Using Em -> B7 -> B+ -> Cm as your modulation, and then resolving a cadence, whether it is G7 -> C or B°7 -> Cm, is a great way to do this modulation. An augmented chord has an unsettled feel to it that "wants" to resolve. A common way for it to resolve, as you have found is for the root to move by a half-step to create a minor ...
1
There are no C chords in the first four bars. What you have is a single F chord, plus some non-chord tones including the Gs in the left hand.
To repeat the old, old advice, stop looking at the notes on the staves and LISTEN to what you wrote! Your first four bars sound perfectly fine, but your analysis of them is misguided.
In fact when you do attempt to ...
1
In the Key of F min C is the V. If you are trying to create a resolution (you'd be in harmonic or melodic at this point) then you'd want to use the C maj, or more appropriately C7. Otherwise moving to C minor in the key of F min is fine. You wrote it so you must make that decision. If you are avoiding the E, Eb in the first 4 bars I'd look at the melody. ...
1
The diminished triad doesn't give a strong sense of having a root. Depending on how it's treated, the diminished triad can sound like an incomplete dominant 7th, e.g., D F Ab might be used/perceived as a Bb7 without the root.
It's hard to say much about I ii I as a progression, because it doesn't come off as functional harmony. A better example might be ...
1
'...is going to be different depending on the key' - not really. Any chord in any key will always contain the same notes - and all called by the same names.Regardless of whatever key it's found in.
What you allude to is your Fmaj9♯11 happens to have a root of F. It will, it always does! But in your scenario, it happens to be found in a piece in key C....
1
Two basic ways to do it: show a key change, or show a secondary function...
Fm: V7 | i Ab: V7 | I ...that shows a key change the two V7 are specific to the keys as labeled.
Fm: V7 | i V7/iii | iii ...that shows the V7 relative to iii using a slash. A key change has not been labeled so it's called a secondary function.
1
Alan W. Pollack has an excellent article on this song here:
http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/AWP/iif.shtml
He analyzes the intro in detail. I agree with his take on it personally. The first 6 bars are in Db and the D chord in the 6th bar is the pivot chord that serves as both the bII in Db and the I in D. in a nutshell:
in Db: ii bII I ...
1
Let me add that the predetermined values of the numbers in chord notation (i.e. the qualifications of the intervals when the numbers appear alone) come from the interval qualifications that result from the dominant chord of the major scale, which is the first chord to which tensions are added if we follow the logic of tonal music. In the key of C major, the ...
1
Yes, for example the min9 is actually a maj13, 3 semitones away
E.G. Gmin9 = BbMaj13
Very useful in jazz when you want to move somewhere other than the predictable (ii-V) patterns, e.g. if G wanted to move to C it can now instead move to Eb (Bb being the 5th Eb as G is to C). It's good to know and gives more options.
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