Theory of a Key

Jeff Metz Jr. · From: York, Pennsylvania, USA

Okay So I know that In a Major Key that the 1,4, & 5 are Major and 2 , 6, & 3 are minor and 7 is diminished.
But What about in a Minor Key? Say in Amin.
Would The 4 chord would be a D but how do I know weather its to be Major or minor?
Thanks
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Ian Rae · From: Redditch, England

Without going into masses of theory, the short answer is it can be either - depends on the melody.
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Scott Duckworth · From: Etowah, TN Western Foothills of the Smokies

Here's a chart for you...

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Les Cargill · From: Oklahoma City, Ok, USA

Lane Gray · From: Topeka, KS

I like Ian's answer and Les's more than Scott's. I think its slightly more often minor than major. It depends on what next. It's not even universal whether its V or v.
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Jim Means · From: Missouri, USA

Jeff,
I'm kinda with Les on this one. I had a discussion with Herby Wallace on this one time and found that most guys writing charts do so from the major key. So whenever I chart a tune I will chart it as the major key. With that in mind the 4 chord would be an F and D would be a 2 chord (either minor or major). The band I play with does the old Johnny Cash song "Wayfaring Stranger" in C (Am). We do the D (2 chord) as a major and the E (3 chord) as a seventh (dominant). But I have heard it done both ways. It all gets very confusing at times doesn't it? BTW, this is just an opinion and I am definitely not an authority. Smile

Jim in Missouri

Les Cargill · From: Oklahoma City, Ok, USA

Dan Klotz · From: Houston, Texas

Sonny Jenkins · From: Texas Masonic Retirement Center,,,Arlington Tx

I remember several years ago I started a thread putting forth the premise that there is no such thing as a "minor key",,,,that premise is based on the fact that there is no signature for a minor "key". After the usual string of agreements and disagreements,,,,Mike (?) from Berklee jumped in and using the "names" of some blues, jazz and classical songs with "minor" in the title to support it, confirmed the existence of a "minor key". I remember Reece and I sitting on his patio and that subject came up,,,,he adamantly agreed with me,,,expressed amazement that anyone would think otherwise,,,,but rather than open the can of worms again,,,,I'll just say to each his own. There is NO key signature indicating a minor key that I'm aware of,,,as far as I'm concerned,,,the minor chords are as much a part of a scale as the majors or altered chords are. If the key signature indicates "C",,,and the pattern stays in minor chords throughout the song,,,so be it,,,it is still in "C". I realize the "masters" wrote songs that were titled ",,,,in the key of E minor",,,or whatever,,,,fine,,,,I still think of all music being in the key it is signatured in,,,if minors are predominant,,,,or any chord for that matter,,,so be it.

John Scanlon · From: Jackson, Mississippi, USA

Interesting to see the different schools of thought.

I think it has to do with the tonal center of the song.

If the key signature has 3 sharps, and the primary chords are A, D, and E, then sure, it's in A major. That's what these particular chords want to resolve to.

However, in the same key signature with 3 sharps, if the primary chords are, say, F#m, Bm, and C#m (maybe throw a D and/or an E in there, too), then I wouldn't say it's in A major - I'd say it's in F# minor.

You can hear what tonal center the chords want to resolve to in both examples, and both have the same number of sharps.

I don't necessarily agree that there's no such thing as a minor key simply because "there's no key signature" for one. For starters, that's just a writing system used to describe and notate music - not define and restrict it. Additionally, a key signature can be used for more than one key in the same way that a number (three sharps in this example) can be used to describe the number of accidentals in more than one key.
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Michael Hummel · From: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

John has expressed very eloquently what my opinion is on the matter. If you tried to tell me "Stairway to Heaven" was in C major instead of A minor, I would say you are out of your mind! Even though the F major chord is used frequently, as is D major!

Mike
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Niels Andrews · From: Salinas, California, USA

And so? What this tells you is the song resolves to a dissonant Chord. The reason everything is written in a major scale is there is no need for a musician playing a piece of music verbatim, to know the key. And if you play tab you have somebody telling you (whomever wrote the tab) where to place your bar and what lever or pedal to push and what string to play. If you are improvising a solo or composing, it is nice to start in the same key as the music. But most garage bands have trouble with that! Winking

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Brint Hannay · From: Maryland, USA

If there's no such thing as a minor key, the classical world has a whole lot of work to do changing the stated keys of pieces by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin.......What do all those classically-trained musicians and scholars know, anyway?

John Scanlon · From: Jackson, Mississippi, USA

Dan Beller-McKenna · From: Durham, New Hampshire, USA

FWIW, this issue has bedeviled music theorists since at least the eighteenth century. The basic problem is this: one can argue that the major scale (and thus triad) can be derived "naturally" from the overtone series. This was most eloquently presented by the French theorist/composer Jean-Philippe Rameau in his 1722 Treatise on Harmony. (Rameau's harmonic theory underlies everything we talk about when we use terms like I and ii chords, or tonic and dominant.)

The minor scale and chord has no such natural bona fides, so it gave Rameau (and later theorists) fits. My favorite solution was the idea of the "undertone" series; a hypothetical system of sympathetic tones like overtones, only they go down instead of up and --uh oh-- can't actually be heard. I believe it was Moritz Hauptmann (nineteenth century) who used the idea of undertones to argue that the minor iv chord is a physical inversion of the tonic (I) major triad. So, C major (C-E-G) is paralleled by F minor, which is made up of the the same sequence of intervals (major third, minor third) going down instead of up:

Les Cargill · From: Oklahoma City, Ok, USA

John Alexander · Posted 28 Aug 2014 11:07 am

Ian Rae · From: Redditch, England

Key signatures arose in order to avoid having to write a sharp or flat before each relevant note. They improved readability and speed of writing, and saved expensive ink and paper. If the music moved to a different key for any length of time, you could change the signature.

John's is an excellent example of how signatures are an encumbrance when music modulates a lot. You could argue for four flats here, but there'd soon be so many naturals there would be no point. There's a lot of late-nineteenth-early-twentieth century concert music which sounds pretty tonal but doesn't attempt to pick a key is it's too restless, and a lot of popular music is the same.

We don't have to save up for parchment and quills anymore, but ease of reading and saving space are still what count.
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Chris Gabriel · From: Oregon, USA

"Everything happens to me" is in Bb Major.
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Ian Rae · From: Redditch, England

....in which case two flats at the front would be correct and make it easier to read, so there's no reason in this case not to have them.

(I've just remembered this thread was originally about minor keys.)
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John Alexander · Posted 29 Aug 2014 12:15 pm

In the example I posted, Everything Happens to Me is indeed being played in the standard key of Bb.

The reason for the method of notation is similar to what Ian said above. As a player and composer, Clare Fischer used so many chromatic tones that he found it simpler to notate his work using no sharps or flats in the key signature. In this transcription of Fischer's performance, the transcriber Bill Dobbins followed Fischer's practice of notation. It's not incorrect - composers can and do use notation as it suits them.

The example is intended to illustrate John Scanlon's point that notation is secondary and doesn't necessarily identify the tonality of the music. If Maurice Anderson heard what Clare Fischer played, he would quickly verify that it was played in Bb, even though the key signature used in the transcription suggests that it might be in C major or A minor.

Les Cargill · From: Oklahoma City, Ok, USA

John Alexander: IV - I !

John Alexander · Posted 29 Aug 2014 3:36 pm

Rich Sullivan · From: Nelson, NH 03457

The reason this is so disputed and misunderstood is probably because there are so many "minor" scales and modes. It is confusing. There is a natural minor scale, harmonic minor scale, melodic minor scale, and three of the modes are also minor - dorian, phrygian, and aeolian. And I'm probably not exhausting the list. The characteristic that is common to all of them is that the third is always minor (or flatted a half tone below the major third.) Historically, early western (European) music was modal (think Gregorian chant). Most of the church music ended up evolving towards either Ionian or Aeolian modes. Ionian mode is the major scale as we know it. And Aeolian mode is the natural minor scale. If you look at the C major scale, all the white notes on a piano starting on C, the relative minor key is A minor, which has all of the same white notes, just starting on A instead of C. This relative minor scale is the natural minor or Aeolian mode. You can call it by either name, because they are the same. Relative to the major scale, the natural minor has the third, sixth, and seventh of the scale flatted. Now look at the chords built on these scale tones, using A minor. The chords built on 1, 4, and 5 are all minor - Am, Dm, Em. By the Renaissance or certainly the Baroque period, it had become common practice to alter the dominant chord (the V chord) in a minor key, making it major, because it just sounded better to their ears. Making the dominant chord major gives a more definite resolution. Try it - play Em to Am, and then play E (major) to Am. Anyway, in the key of A minor, that E chord becomes major by raising the G to G#. And this creates the harmonic minor scale, which is the natural minor with a raised (sharped) seventh tone. This major seventh (in either a major or minor key) is also called the leading tone, because your ear hears it resolving upward, or leading to the tonic. The interval between the flatted, minor sixth and the sharped, major seventh sounded awkward, and this led to the sixth being raised also, in a scale passage that was ascending. When the scale was descending, both the sixth and seventh tones remained flat or minor. This is the melodic minor scale. Now shift gears for a moment and consider the Dorian mode, which can be constructed by taking the notes of a major scale, but starting on the second note of the major scale instead of the tonic. The easiest to consider would be D Dorian, since D is the second of C major. All of the notes are again white notes on the piano - D E F G A B C. The chord built on the fourth would a G major (G B D), and the chord built on the fifth would be A minor (A C E). So to review all of this, you have the following.

Natural minor (Aeolian mode) has minor I, IV, and V chords.
Harmonic minor has minor I and IV chords, and a major V chord.
Melodic minor has a minor I chord. The IV and V chords could be major or minor, depending on the motion in the passage.
Dorian mode has minor I and V chords, and a major IV chord.

All of these are commonly heard in modern pop music. And all of the verbiage above really just leads back to the original question. In a minor song, your 4 chord could be major or minor. It just depends on the mode or scale the composer used and the sound he wanted.

John Alexander · Posted 29 Aug 2014 5:17 pm

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