Modulation Made Easy — Eight Quick Key Changes Explained

Changing key — modulating, to use the technical term — can seem very complicated, but it doesn't have to be. In this tutorial I look at eight straightforward ways of changing from one key to another. This is handy if you want to progress smoothly from one song to another in a different key, or if you want to change key within a song to give it a "lift" or a change of character.

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00:00 Intro - why modulate/change key?
01:35 Modulating major to major, up a fifth
09:04 Modulating major to minor, up a major third
10:50 Modulating major to major, up a fourth
18:17 Relative key modulation
22:14 Parallel key modulation
25:59 Minor key modulations
27:40 Two important techniques
29:52 Modulating between remote keys
33:52 What next?

[mrmaison]

I just did a song trying modulation at the end for the first time and now i see this video which will help me take it further. Thank you!

[quaternion-pi]

Gosh, why didn't I learn this after 7 years of classical piano lessons? Thanks for your many excellent tutorials.

[arthouston]

I enjoyed taking this in, even though I am not yet concerned with moving from one song to the next!!!!

[tomschmidt]

I'm just a piano hobbyist here in the US. I'm YouTube trained with dreams of playing like yourself. You, Bill, are one of my top 5 YouTube instructors. I can't thank you enough for your video instruction. I have bought your books and I'm now going to make a $$ contribution to you. Many thanks, Merry Christmas and I hope you're able to book gigs very soon.

[rebanelson]

Excellent lesson - clear, thorough and beautiful!

[MrMikomi]

Very nice trick with the major to parallel minor modulation. I had never considered that it's asymmetric but yes you're right, it is. Thanks!

[donlessnau]

This guy is so good. Really exceptional. Well done. Thanks Bill.

[patriciaann]

Very interesting tutorial, thanks Bill .

[MuradGakhramanov]

Thank you Mr. Bill. Literally, one of the best piano teachers on youtube. You taught me a lot of techniques with creating relation between feelings and chords. Thank you very much!

[xhead]

Fantastic lesson! Filled in some blanks for me, thanks!

[thejazzpiano]

I think in 10 years of YouTube I've never seen your face before - Hello, Bill!

[HenrikRudi]

I don't comment very often on videos like this, but I just wanted to say you're one the best instructors I've found for learning music theory and general skills and techniques on the piano (and I've been learning this stuff for a while). Thank you!

[wongjin]

Hi teacher, I'd purposely sign in and subscribe your channel which i don't usually do but you really inspiring! It's so much fun and exciting along with your videos. I feel you're my composing teacher :P TQ Bill Teacher

[kevinmedvedocky]

Very interesting. I realized that you can modulate f min when you transform the gminor 7 wich is diatonic in the key bflat to a gmin7 flat 5 wich is the 2 in the key of fminor and the goes to the C7 wich is the 5 and then to F minor.

[gregfam]

I missed out on the bundle savings because I got each separately. I regret NOTHING.

[igallery]

"Show you some quick and dirty ways of modulating"....If people didn't know any better, it sounds rather like we're being invited in to the backroom of a "Blue Shop" haha.
Still, the video is really great in showing a nice way to modulate between keys "on the fly".

When you mentioned Chromatic Mediants, I immediately thought you were going to whip out Coltrane's magic circle, saying that, it's weird that no one has built a more "thorough" version of the circle of fifths and forths in recent years to show modal relationships, movements between the parallel minor and major keys alongside a "harmonic map". I am currently in the process of building one and wondered if you'd be interested in critiquing it when it's done?

I noticed someone was commenting about "keyboard rattling", I'll take a punt and assume that you are playing through an aux out so a mic catches you and the piano? If so, if I am not mistaken you've got the Nord Piano 4? If I am right, I think that has a USB connection so you can hook up midi-over-USB and play through a DAW and use the mic exclusively for your voice over. Sure you could use the midi output but depends if you have a midi-in interface, midi-over-USB is definitely more expedient. All in all, the key action noise should pretty much be greatly reduced although to be honest it doesn't bother me as you are teaching theory and technique as opposed to sharing a performance piece.

Still, envious that you have a fully weighted keyboard, I'm still using a semi-weighted keyboard, the old reliable Keystation 61.

Great content again, thanks for sharing!

[CeeGusts_Waves]

Thanks for the instructions for modulations to the fifth above B flat. But what if you are in D flat, and only wish to modulate to E flat? Then what would be the most melodic sequence to modulate to the next diatonic tone?

[Juan_Teppa]

Hi Bill! Hope you can read this. Got a question about 2 5 1 and 4 5 1 modulation techniques, here it goes, hope you can help me:

Let's say my tonal center is F on a F Lydian based scale progression (F, G, Em) and I'd like to change keys to a C Lydian based progression.

Could that 2 5 1 or 4 5 1 modulation technique be applied to change keys from F to C Lydian using D, G, C (2 5 1) and/or F#dim, G, C (4 5 1) respectively?

Thanks in advance! :)

[deogratiaskatinda]

Thank you so
much for your rich expositions. Can I get your number for more personal assistance?

[prasadchavan]

Sir please make a video on how to get relative and perfect pitch perfect for adults