Understanding Basic Music Theory - Catherine Schmidt-Jones [69]
Naming Chords Within a Key
So far we have concentrated on identifying chord relationships by number, because this system is commonly used by musicians to talk about every kind of music from classical to jazz to blues. There is another set of names that is commonly used, particularly in classical music, to talk about harmonic relationships. Because numbers are used in music to identify everything from beats to intervals to harmonics to what fingering to use, this naming system is sometimes less confusing.
Figure 5.46.
Exercise 5.5.2. (Go to Solution)
Name the chord.
Dominant in C major
Subdominant in E major
Tonic in G sharp major
Mediant in F major
Supertonic in D major
Submediant in C major
Dominant seventh in A major
Exercise 5.5.3. (Go to Solution)
The following chord progression is in the key of G major. Identify the relationship of each chord to the key by both name and number. Which chord is not in the key? Which chord in the key has been left out of the progression?
Figure 5.47.
Minor Keys
Since minor scales follow a different pattern of intervals than major scales, they will produce chord progressions with important differences from major key chord progressions.
Exercise 5.5.4. (Go to Solution)
Write (triad) chords that occur in the keys of A minor, E minor, and D minor. Remember to begin each triad on a note of the natural minor scale and to include only notes in the scale in each chord. Which chord relationships are major? Which minor? Which diminished? If you need staff paper, print this PDF file
Notice that the actual chords created using the major scale and its relative minor scale are the same. For example, compare the chords in A minor (Figure 5.50) to the chords in C major (Figure 5.43). The difference is in how the chords are used. As explained above, if the key is C major, the chord progression will likely make it clear that C is the tonal center of the piece, for example by featuring the bright-sounding (major) tonic, dominant, and subdominant chords (C major, G major or G7, and F major), particularly in strong cadences that end on a C chord.
If the piece is in A minor, on the other hand, it will be more likely to feature (particularly in cadences) the tonic, dominant, and subdominant of A minor (the A minor, D minor, and E minor chords). These chords are also available in the key of C major, of course, but they will not be given such a prominent place.
As mentioned above, the "flavor" of sound that is created by a major chord, with a minor seventh added, gives a particularly dominant (wanting-to-go-to-the-home-chord) sound, which in turn gives a more strong feeling of tonality to a piece of music. Because of this, many minor pieces change the major chord so that it is a dominant seventh, even though that requires using a note that is not in the key.
Exercise 5.5.5. (Go to Solution)
Look at the chords in Figure 5.50. What note of each scale would have to be changed in order to make v major? Which other chords would be affected by this change? What would they become, and are these altered chords also likely to be used in the minor key?
The point of the harmonic minor scale is to familiarize the musician with this common feature of harmony, so that the expected chords become easy to play in every minor key. There are also changes that can be made to the melodic lines of a minor-key piece that also make it more strongly tonal. This involves raising (by one half step) both the sixth and seventh scale notes, but only when the melody is ascending. So the musician who wants to become familiar with melodic patterns in every minor key will practice melodic minor scales, which use different notes for the ascending and descending scale.
You can begin practicing harmonic analysis by practicing identifying whether a piece is