Modulation

[BricksOfAwesome]

I think you also should have mentioned modulations that shifts the tonal centre but keeps to the relative set of notes (like F major to D minor). This is probably the most common modulation I've heard and is used in a ton of music, for example:

Karma Police (A Dorian to G major)
Hysteria (A minor to C major)
Dr who theme (B phrygian to G major)

[nevermindidontknow]

More 6 years after uploading and 0 dislikes!

[Bramhallthefifth]

"We'll get to that later"
Two years later...

[theyoutube]

Wow your videos are great. Thanks for putting these together.

[rachelzimet]

One note, as a composer, i want to make about tritones in modulation – one, moving in minor thirds up and down is fun (e.g. going directly CMaj, E-flatMaj, G-flatMaj, AMaj, CMaj) and that's a good option for pivoting between tritones, as two minor thirds makes a tritone.

[LimeGreenTeknii]

2:10 Direct modulations downward are a good idea if you *do* want to subtract energy, though. In Undertale- Your Best Friend (You Know What's Going On), this trick is employed, along with an accompanying ritardando (BPM getting slower), several times to show that the game's antagonist is getting fed up with trying to trick you when you won't take the bait.

[niemand]

This might be a very weird question, but if you would hypothetically (well not quite hypothetically, I'm working on an audition piece for conservatory) want to transpose from F minor to G major, could you use the C minor chord as a pivot chord? Since you can use the moldur resolution (I think it's called a minor plagal cadence internationally), to resolve C minor to G?

[caterscarrots]

What about the sudden C major to C minor shift that I hear a lot? I don't hear it in pop music, mostly because I don't listen to pop. But I do hear it a lot in classical music. And what composer uses this sudden parallel major/minor shift the most out of all of them? Beethoven.


Sometimes the shift uses the V chord as the pivot. This is especially common in the occasions where Mozart does a parallel major/minor shift. Sometimes it uses the I chord and chromatically alters it. This is one of many routes that Beethoven uses for his parallel major/minor shifts. But the weirdest one that I hear involves the subdominant. More specifically, like this:


C: I, IV, V7, I, ... IV Cm: i, iv, vii°7, i


So the major subdominant goes to the minor tonic. How would you explain that? An inverse minor plagal cadence? Borrowing from melodic minor for just 1 chord?

[ZERO--]

Do you know any songs with a modulation between keys a tritone apart?

Very good videos by the way.

[zacharytaylor]

something i love to do is to have a melody in C major and go I, vi, IV. then when I'm on the IV chord (F major), then use it as the V chord of B flat major. This adds a cool sense of a "surprise resolution" as I call it.

[zacharytaylor]

If we are looking for some interesting textures, would it be possible to play a few bars of atonality until the notion of a key seems practically irrelevant, then modulate to any key I want?

[Swoodard]

I was doing some exercises and I noticed that the dominant chord doesn't change (at least with parallel modulation. I feel like noticing this is important but, I'm not sure how to apply this discovery

[fuish]

This chord progression I wrote, F#m Dmaj7 C#m7 Emaj7 Ebm7 Bbm A Abm, modulates a few times but I still can't figure out why those last three, Bbm A Abm, work so well together. Especially considering the fact that I don't use the A as a transition or anything, I treat it like a normal chord in the progression. The others I get, Dmaj7 and Emaj7 aren't in the same key but C#m is in both E major and A major where Dmaj7 is present, but those last three confuse me

[XmanABQ]

I noticed you use the notation Imi IVmi, and I was curious why not just i and iv

[xRisingForcex]

1:50 truck driver's gear change :)

[rachelzimet]

after i heard the pivot from A to E with the baseline in 2 i wanted to hear E - D - C# - B - and go back to the tonic XD