Jacob Collier's Diminished Chord Modulation EXPLAINED

recently i came across a video of jacob caldier talking about the fully diminished chords and now he calls them a four-way crossroads of sorts and how you can take one diminished chord and end up in four different keys and at first i didn't really understand this concept after he explained it and demonstrated it so i took time on my piano to understand it for myself and after i fully understood it i decided to make a video about it just in case somebody else didn't understand it and i could potentially help them so if you ever wanted to know how to do a diminished chord modulation this is how you do it now let me show how all these modulations sound for simplicity's sake we'll be in the key of c so we'll take a c fully diminished chord [Music] we'll take that c move it down to a b and that takes us to e major we'll go back to the c diminished chord but this time we'll take the e flat move that down to a d and that takes us to g major back to c diminished we'll take the g flat move that down to an f [Music] and that takes us to b flat major and the last one we'll go back to c diminished take the b double flat put that down to b flat double flat b triple flat and that takes us to d flat major let's go over some basics first before you understand what a diminished chord modulation is you need to understand what a diminished chord is so let's go over the types of chords just real quick core qualities are defined by the distances between the notes that make them up for instance c major is made up of the root c the major third e which is four half steps up from the root one two three four [Music] and f fifth that is three half steps up from the major third one two three and that's what makes up every major chord whether it be c d or e or any of the other ones diminished chords is what we're talking about here today so what defines a diminished chord so diminished chords are a root followed by a minor third which is three half steps one two three followed by three more half steps one two three and that makes up a diminished triad but today we're talking about fully diminished chords which adds another three half steps one two three and that's what makes up a diminished a fully diminished seventh chord this can be applied to any note just following the same formula if you went from g and went up three half steps one two three one two three one two three now we have a g fully diminished seventh chord what you also need to know is the concept of cadences and specifically the authentic cadence there are four different types of cadences but the one that we're focusing on today is the authentic cadence which is a five specifically a five seven chord resolving down to a one chord such as this all you have to do is take your one chord your tonic chord in this case c go to the fifth note one two three four five and your major chord based off of that fifth note in our case g major and because we're talking about five seven chords you're gonna want to throw a minor seventh on top of that which in this case is f [Music] once you have your five seven chord the voice leading is pretty simple the seventh note resolves down the leading tone resolves up and it ends up sounding like this [Music] so the reason why this diminished chord modulation works so well is because you're turning this diminished chord into one of four combinations of a five seven chord to lead you into a new key so you're turning the diminished chord and using that diminished chord in as a gateway into a authentic cadence well that's not a cute frame to end on anyway i was editing this and i didn't like how i just explained that i didn't think it was clear enough and made enough sense so i'm gonna try again but uh better western harmony is built upon the concept of tension and release and certain chords give off a feeling of tension and certain chords give off a feeling of release after that tension what we're doing is we're taking the c diminished chord altering the one note and by altering that one note we're turning it into four different dominant seven chords and now these dominant seven chords are now functioning as five sevenths of their new key and now because of our concept of tension and release that we were talking about we have our diminished chord which is very unstable followed up by the dominant five seven chord which is also really unstable being followed by the release of the home tonic chord which is the most release that you can get in a key so it creates this very satisfying resolution that leads you up into one of four new keys i think that made more sense well now that you have that knowledge i hope you wield your fully diminished chords wisely because i have a lot of power that means you have a lot of responsibility treat them nice anyway i hope you enjoyed this video if you have any other music theory concepts or topics you want me to talk about put them in the comments and i'll read them and if i like them i'll talk about them be sure to like comment and subscribe and you know do the youtube things and i'll see you guys next time catch you later

Channel: Richard Ashby

Views: 25,846

Keywords: Richard, Ashby, Richard Ashby, Saxophone, Cover, Tenor, Music, Producer, GarageBand, jacob collier moon river, jacob collier tiny desk, jacob collier all i need, Jacob Collier, music theory for beginners, music theory guitar, music theory, how to modulate, how to modulate your voice, how to modulate between keys, how to change keys, diminished scale, diminished chords, what are diminished chords, what are diminished chords piano, what are diminished and augmented chords, jacob collier

Id: tQ7j8CMc4tw

Length: 5min 34sec (334 seconds)

Published: Sat May 08 2021