MusicSurveyor

Composing With Modulation – Relative Keys And Chord Substitutions

May 13

musicsurveyormusic Composing, music 1 Comment

Here are some ideas to get your music out of a one key or chord progression rut. You don’t need to be a composing genius like Beethoven or Wagner to make your song or track more interesting to change or modulate the key for a bridge / middle out / break down. It’s simply a matter of following a few simple rules and knowing what chords work together.

The most common way to modulate (change) to a different key or tonal center is to move the song to its relative minor or major. For example if you have a song in the key of C Major, A Minor is the relative Minor due to both chords sharing the C and E notes.

If the song is in D Minor the relative major is F Major again because both chords share two notes. In this case F and A.

The rules to follow here are to go from a Major Key to its relative Minor Key go down 3 notes (e.g. C to A) and to go from a Minor Key to a Major Key go up 3 notes
(e.g. D to F). Simple!

Apart from using this technique to modulate a song or track to new key you can also use this as a simple form of Chord Substitution. This is a technique often used in jazz music where one chord is replaced with another. For example if you had a chord progression that was Dm F G Am you could use the rules of Relative Minors and Majors to change the chords to F Dm Em C.

Anthony Pell