- Hi, I'm working with a number
of composers and arrangers at the moment who are a
little bit unsure about modulating from one key to another. And they're not sure, well,
what are my choices of keys, can I go from this key to that key or maybe I've tried to modulate
from this key to that key but it sounds a bit
drastic and the transition hasn't gone terribly well. Or people kind of fight
shy of it really and just write the whole piece in one key, which can sound a little bit boring so this idea of modulating
from one key to another creates a bit of variety. And of course if you're a
performer and you can look at the music you're playing and
work out which key you're in from the circle of fifths which
is on the board behind me, then that's kind of quite
useful as well isn't it? Then you can see
accidentals that come and go and you might notice where
there are various key changes and that will help you to
play the notes accurately, because if you're not always
entirely sure about which key you're in, it can cause
you to play wrong accidentals. So it's kind of connecting
things like you're probably playing scales on these different keys. So if you're thinking well
I know the scale of A major. So if I know that this
passage of music is in the key of A major, I've got a
pretty good idea which notes I need to be playing at that point. So connecting the key
knowledge between scales and arpeggios and actual pieces
is a very useful thing for any performer. So whether you're a composer, an arranger or a performer,
well some kind of idea about what's going on with keys and
modulations is quite useful. Now if you're not at all
certain or not fully certain about what the circle of fifths
is, now would be a good time to pause and have a look at
our Music Matters video that explains the circle of fifths. Just goes through the whole
thing about what's going on here with the three circles. This middle circle here in
black giving us major keys. This inner circle in green
giving us minor keys. What we call the relative
minor keys to each major key. And the outer circle in red,
giving us the flats and the sharps that belong to those keys. So for example, in A major
we have a key signature of F-sharp, C-sharp and G-sharp. And the relative minor that
has the same key signature is F-sharp minor. So if that sort of knowledge is perfectly obvious to you and you know
exactly how to construct a circle of fifths then
carry on with us now. If you're now thinking I'm
not terribly sure about that, now's the moment to go and
have a look at that other video that we made explaining the
construction of the circle of fifths, what the three circles do, how to put it together and so on. What I'm now going to
focus on in this video is if I'm a composer and
I'm in a particular key, how do I know which are the
good keys to modulate to? Well let's pick a key, let's
say D major is the home key of the piece that we're writing. And we've written a few bars
in D major, now we're thinking well actually a modulation to another key would be pretty good. Now if you tried to modulate
from D major to A-flat major, that's quite difficult to
achieve if you wanted to get a particular effect well you
know could be quite a dramatic one where you could finish in D major. And suddenly you're in A-flat major. You know, there's a kind of
drama about doing that kind of thing, but it's quite a wrench you know, if you drive a car, particularly
if you drive a manual car it's a bit like changing gear
without using the clutch, it might just work, but
it might leave half of the gear box on the road behind you. So this idea of smooth
transitions between one key and another is what we're talking about. So if I'm in D major, which
of the keys are going to be the best ones or the
easiest ones to modulate to? Well they're going to be the closest keys on the circle of fifths. So for example, if I'm in D major, I could quite easily go to A major. Why is that, because in
D major I'm using F-sharp and C-sharp, to get to
A major all I need to do is add a G-sharp. Now in a sort of conventional musical language, then what we would
do is we would be playing along quite happily in D major and
then we would add the G-sharp that would pull us towards A
major and then we'd have some kind of cadence in A major. So if I make up a little piece in D major. Say that's my first phrase
and then I'm thinking well now I want to modulate to
A major so what do I do, introduce the G-sharp. And then I'm going to
have a cadence in A major. So you see, I've introduced the G-sharp and then I've gone to A major. In order to make that modulation
effective in conventional language, I use something
called a pivot chord. In other words, I find the
chords that are common to D major and to A major,
what do I mean by that? Well chord I in D major
is chord IV in A major so that could be a pivot chord. chord II is no good because
it's got a G-natural in it so it's not going to take us
to A major, so forget that one. Chord III, that could be okay,
it's chord VI in A major. You just have to think chord
III is a slightly less usual chord to use, you might want to do it but slightly less usual. Chord IV, no use to me
at all because it's got a G-natural in it, won't take me to A major. Chord V, that's a good
one because chord V is a strong chord in the key
of D and it's also chord I in the key of A so
that's a pretty cool one. Chord VI, that would do quite
nicely because it's also chord II in the key of A. Chord VII, no good to me, because it's got a G-natural in it. So you see, you can identify
which are the pivot chords and which are not the pivot chords. Now this is the whole point,
if you modulate to a key that's near by, you'll
have more pivot chords. If you try to modulate from
D major to A-flat major, you're not going to find a pivot chord, there isn't one that does it,
so it's going to feel like a bit of a wrench from one key to another. But if you can find a pivot
chord like I did in that example I can't remember what I played
now, but the first cadence was in D and then I used a D major chord, there's my pivot chord, because it's I in D but it's also IV in A. Having done the pivot
chord I can then introduce the G-sharp and go to the key of A. So you find a pivot chord, a chord that's common to both these keys, use the pivot chord and then
introduce the accidental and then have a cadence in the new key. So you can see why there's
sense in going from D major to A major, it's a closely related key. Well if I can go from D
to A major surely I can go the other way, I could go
from D major to G major. Now what am I going to do if
I go from D major to G major, I need to lose the C-sharp don't I? So what I'm going to
do is to be in D major, introduce a C-natural and
that's going to take me to G major and again, I've
got to find the pivot chord possibilities going
from D major to G major. Because it's a closely
related key it will be easy to find pivot chords. So I'm in D major. There's my pivot chord,
that's chord I in D major. It's also chord V in G
major, so I can now introduce a C-natural and go to G major. Okay, now I'm in G major. So you see what I'm doing, using a pivot chord, slipping
into a key next door. Another possibility is
obviously to go from D major to B minor, well how do I deal with that? Because if the key
signature is the same well it's all going to sound the same isn't it? Well no because we know, when
we're dealing in a minor key, if we want to think about a
minor scale, we could be using the harmonic minor scale
so we're going to raise the seventh degree of the scale. So in B minor we could
be using some A-sharps. If we're using the melodic
minor scale we'll raise six and seven going up
the melodic minor scale so that's G-sharp and A-sharp. When we're coming down we
use A-natural, G-natural. But we're going to be dealing
with these accidentals that give us B minor. Do we need to use a pivot
chord because we're going from major to minor, yes we sure do. So just go through the D
major chords and relate them mainly to B harmonic minor
because you're talking about chords so it's called harmonic
minor because it's talking about harmony, about chords
and you'll find there are plenty of pivot chord possibilities. So I could be in D major. Then I might move to a pivot chord, I'm going to move now to chord VI. Because chord VI is
also chord I in B minor. So there's my pivot chord,
now what I'm going to do then is carry on in B minor and use an A sharp. And now I'm home and dry
in the key of B minor. Okay, I could go to F-sharp minor. Now if I go from D major to
F sharp minor I might be able to do that directly because
there are possibilities you know chord III in D major is
chord I in F-sharp minor, so I can get there directly
through a pivot chord. Or I might decide to make it
an even smoother transition start in D major, pass through A major on the way to F-sharp
minor, I could do that. Or I could go from D major to B minor and then go to F-sharp minor. Or if I wanted to go to E
minor I could do that directly quite easily because for
example, chord II in D major is chord I in E minor, so that would work. I could go through G major
on my way to E minor. Or I could go through B
minor on my way to E minor. So one thing the circle of
fifths actually tells us about is where the closely related keys are. So if you're playing Baroque
and Classical period music, you're very likely to find
that the modulations are going to these closely related keys
so you can sort of have an idea that you can think,
well I'm playing a Sonata in D major, so when it modulates
it's probably going to go to A major but it might go to G major. Might have a bit of B minor in it. Might even have a bit of E
minor and F-sharp minor in it. At least you've got some
expectation of what the most likely keys are and if you're writing
or arranging and you're wanting to modulate, well at
least this gives you an idea where the closely related keys are. And at least it tells you
that if you want to modulate from D major to A-flat major
well you're doing something a bit more radical, it's
not impossible at all but expect it to have an
extra kind of dramatic impact. So I hope that's quite
useful, in kind of locating the closely related keys
on the circle of fifths. And I hope that empowers your playing, your music making and any
composition or arranging that you're doing.
