Modal Trasmutation
All songwriters and composers have a well furnished bag of tricks that allow them to take a simple idea (a melody or a chord progression) and to flesh it out to make a full song. Today we will see a simple trick that will help you write interesting variations of a chord progression. You can use the new chord progression to be the verse of a song, while your original progression is the chorus (or vice versa), or to write the bridge or your song. The idea is to produce a different chord progression that is yet somehow related to the old one. Let’s see how.
The Chords of the Major and Minor Scales
The first thing we need to do is to compare the chords for two parallel keys. Parallel keys are two keys with the same root (one major and one minor), for instance: A major and A minor. If we list and compare the chords for these two keys we have:
As you can see, while there are some notes in common between the two scales, there are no chords in common. Now, our goal is to take a chord progression in major and change its modality to minor, or taking a chord progression in minor an changing its modality to major.
From Major to Minor and Vice Versa
Let’s start with an example to make things clearer. We have a simple chord progression in A major: A F#m D E A. Now, looking at the table above, we can transform this chord progression in Am by taking the correspondent chord in A minor this way:
- A is the first chord in A major. The first chord in A minor is Am.
- F#m is the 6th chord in A major. The 6th chord in A minor is F
- D is the 4th chord in A major. The 4th chord in A minor is Dm
- E is the 5th chord in A major. The 5th chord in A minor is Em
So we obtain the new progression in Am: Am F Dm Em Am. Now, take your guitar and play them one after the other. Can you hear how they are different, yet they are similar to each other? Good, this is exactly what we are going after!
Ok, What About the Diminished Chords?
A problem appear when going from major to minor with the second chord, or when going from minor to major with the seventh chord. In both cases, our “destination” chord is a diminished chord. While diminished chords are absolutely “legal” chords, in practice they tend to not sound really well and are best avoided unless this is exactly the sound you are searching for (in my experience, this is not the case most of the time).
So what can we do to avoid diminished chords? Let’s see the two cases separately.
Going from A major to A minor, we have the chord Bm that becomes B diminished. The B diminished chord contains the notes B D F. There are two chord in the key of A minor who contain similar notes: Dm (D F A, two notes in common) and G (G B D, two notes in common). Depending on the situation, one of these two will work instead of the B diminished chords when going from major to minor. Example: A F#m Bm E A can become Am F Dm Em A.
Going from A minor to A major, we have the G chord that becomes G# diminished. As before, let’s see what chords have similar notes. G# diminished is G# B D. Similar chords are Bm (B D F#, two notes in common) and E (E G# B, two notes in common). Again, depending on the specific chord progression, one of these two chords will sound good instead of the G# diminished. Example: Am F C G Am can become A F#m C#m E A.
Changing modality to a chord progression can be done not only with the major and the minor scales, but also using all the other modes (Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian...). Being able to do it at a moment's notice will make you able to express any emotion you want in music (even with the same melody!)
If you want to compose with the modes and train to be able to change the modality of chord progressions at will, then you need to learn about Guitar Scales and Modes: clock the button below to find out how:
