These 3 Chords will Make Them Cry - Minor Plagal Cadence [Songwriting Lesson]

one of the very first chord changes that I was able to instantly recognize upon hearing it was the minor play GLE chord change and that's what we're gonna talk about today what is it how to use it how do we apply it and all sorts of good stuff like that it's a really cool chord change you're gonna hear it quite often in popular music all sorts of different genres and once you get a grasp of how to form it you can apply it anywhere you need so I think it's a very good place to start if you're getting into songwriting and music theory essentially what we're gonna do is we're gonna start off by doing a quick recap on diatonic chords if you're not familiar with it I'm gonna blast through some basic concepts here and then we're gonna go straight into the actual minor play GLE change and how to use it and then I'll show you a few examples of it in popular music and I'll give you a few final thoughts on the theory behind it and what you can do to accommodate something like a minor minor play goal change okay so for starters let's talk about diatonic chords those are chords within a key and essentially all we need to do is we need to know a major scale we are going to do let's do a major today seven notes of a major and the eighth note is the octave and here's the deal with diatonic chords is that every one of those notes one two three four five six seven every one of those notes I'm gonna assign it its own chord okay so the first note and it's gonna get a chord the second note it's gonna get a chord third node you get a chord you get a chord they all get chords alright and if you see we write these numbers not as just numbers but we write them as Roman numerals all right and some of those Roman numerals would be uppercase and some of those Roman numerals will be lowercase and that just tells you what kind of chord that numbers gonna get so for example the first note is an uppercase numeral that means that first note will get its own major chord a major the second note is a lowercase numeral that means that that note would get its own minor chord B minor and so forth and so forth alright what we need though is the fourth note that's what this is all gonna be about alright so let's go to our first note which is the first finger alright on fifth fret and like I said we're in a today so if I want to find out the first chord and the fourth chord here's what I would do the first note is obviously a or I think it's a major chord so there's my 1 chord that's pretty easy but the fourth note let's count up to a one two three four that note right there is D we're gonna give it a major chord and that would be the actual four core and it would resolve to the one core now this change going from four to one that's called a play goal cadence or an Amen cadence you might hear it referred to as very nice soft little resolution right there and you hear it all over the place it's not too special and it's very common but what's a little more unique and that's what we're getting into is the minor play go and that means instead of making it a major four chord we're gonna leave the key and we're gonna make it a minor four chord and that will resolve to my one chord all right you hear that change and wistful minor four to one it's very very nice and that is the minor play goal change so essentially all you have to do is find a note of your key all right like I said we're an EA there's your 1 chord go up four notes one two three four and make it a minor chord there's your minor four to your major there's your minor play go change now what's more common is to hear a major four chord first then the minor four chord and then the one chord and that sounds like this so I'm in the key of a here's my four chord right here here's my minor four chord and then I'm back so that's a major D major D minor and then back to a major all right now we're starting to get into the love song depressing you know heart pulling chord change that we hear a little bit more frequently all right I really really like that change and I think you can see how easy it is to apply this in different places right so right there I was in the key of A if I want to do this in the key of C let's just start on C all right and play my major scale and I'll have to do is start on my first note and give it a major chord go to your fourth note and we'll do the major four chord it's that chord shape right there and then we'll do a minor shape on the same note so in the key of C we have C major we have F major we have F minor and back to C major and once you know the names of the chords you're freed up you know move it into an open position you know doing C major here instead and then f major here and then F minor and then back to C alright really really nice change now I want you to be able to identify the emotional content of this chord change it's very important to be able to know what it feels like not to know what it looks like and you know sounds like that's important too but really knowing what it feels like means you don't have to work when you're hearing and you're when you're composing I mean for example if you look at a stop sign you don't have to calculate that it's a stop sign you're not saying oh it's red it's you know an octagon it's got the white letters oh it says sto P you just instantly identify a stop sign as a stop sign and in music you can get the same sort of familiarity with different musical concepts when I hear a minor plagued will change like this I'm not calculating scale degrees and thinking oh I think I hear the fourth degree and I say oh I think it's it's more of just I recognize it immediately now because I've played with it so many times I've composed with it I've learned so many songs where it occurs and it's just recognizable to me now that's not something I was born with that was something that I developed and trust me if I can do it you then you can do it too but it really comes down to exposing yourself to these kinds of concepts and really playing with them writing with them memorizing them and labeling them it all helps make them more familiar concepts okay so now that we've gotten out of the way what is the minor play go I want to show you a few examples of where we're actually going to hear it in popular music let's start off with our Kelly alright I believe I can fly [Music] also in in my life by the Beatles in the first section we go from major four to a minor four to A one [Music] once again in creep by Radiohead we've got the verse section which is just uh you know ends with a major four to a minor four to a one [Music] you [Music] so like I said I think it's got a pretty distinct feel and I think really what comes down to is that that four chord let's say we're back in the key of a I think that four chord and when you're on a major four chord it's very normal and very optimistic so you expect something happy but then you let them down with that minor four to get back to the one and I think that's where a lot of attention here comes from is that you're expecting something and you don't get it and then by the time you're back at the one chord you still kind of have that bittersweet taste in your mouth you're not it's not completely gone you still have the memory of that sadness on the four chord to get back to one so I you know I encourage you to think as many ways to interpret that emotionally and think of as many ways to memorize it as you can use different songs as examples and definitely play with it in different inversions on your guitar last but not least let's talk a little bit about the theory here you can think of this minor four chord is being borrowed from the parallel minor scale so if for example in the key of a major my four chord is d major but in the key of a minor my four chord is D minor so we can think that we just borrowed that four chord from a minor instead which means if I wanted to sing on top of that or play notes on top of this I would probably pick notes from the a minor scale that's the parallel minor scale alright there's also a natural minor for two major one progression in the key of mixolydian flat six or the fifth mode of melodic minor so you could actually stay in one key by using these two chord changes and you'd see some pretty you get some pretty cool progressive sounding modal stuff going there all right so I mean I hope this gets you started in songwriting this is how I think about writing songs and there's a million ways to do it but I think this is just one tools you know kind of identifying chord changes memorizing them becoming familiar with them and then when you're actually composing you want to make somebody you know really wistful and heartfelt and you know heartbroken then you can grab in this minor play go and see what happens alright so I hope this video helped you out if you have any questions or comments please leave me a comment down below or get a hold of me on Twitter or Facebook or send me an email and I'll see if I can answer any questions you might have on these topics alright thanks for watching

Channel: Signals Music Studio

Views: 786,819

Keywords: jake lizzio, dole mansion, crystal lake, free lesson, guitar lesson, cool guitar, play solos, how to play guitar, minor plagal, plagal cadence, minor plagal cadence, iv-i, iv-I, song writing, songwriting lesson, song writing lesson, songwriting, theory lesson, music theory lesson, music theory, how to write music, chord change lesson, lesson on chords, cool chords

Id: YEadIDOBpuA

Length: 8min 21sec (501 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 02 2017