J. Anthony Allen shows how to add harmonic color by borrowing chords from nearby keys. Using G major as an example, he identifies D major as a related key and pulls in chords like A major and F sharp minor to create fresher sounds without leaving the original key.
Okay, let's say we're writing a song. Let's write a song in the key of G major, okay? So we're working on our song. It's in the key of G major. I know all the chords I can use, right? Because I use my diatonic chord progression, and it shows me all my possible chords that are in the key of G major, right? So I'm playing around with those chords and I have, you know, something comes into my head and I just think, I just need something different here. None of these chords are working. What else can I do rather than just use all the chords in my diatonic chord progression, right? I gotta have a new idea. Something a little different. Something that is gonna sound a little out of place, but not a lot. It's still gonna be a nice sound. Here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna consult your friendly circle of fifths. You're going to say, I'm in the key of G. What are my closely related keys? They are C or D. They are one accidental away, right? G has one sharp, C has none. So it's only one accidental away, and D has two. Let's say we decide to go to D. Okay? Now, there's two things I could do here. I could do a key change. But we're not really talking about key changes right now. What we're talking about is just borrowing. Borrowing from a closely related key. And you can do this. So what we're going to do is we're going to look at all the chords in the key of D and see if any of those will work, right? We're just going to borrow one from a closely related key. So let's have a look at that. Okay, so here's my diatonic chord progression in the key of G major. Let's review it real quick and look at what my chords are. So these are the chords I've been using in my song, right? G major, that's our I chord. Our II chord is going to be an A minor chord. And remember, I know this because I know that pattern of my diatonic chord progression. If you forgot that review the previous class, it's super duper important. So the pattern is major, minor, minor, major, major, minor, diminished major. So my third chord is going to be minor and it's built on a B. So it's going to be a B minor chord. I have a C major. I have a D major, E minor, F sharp diminished, and then another G major. So I'm working with these chords, and they're sounding kind of cool, but nothing's really working, you know, Like I need something a little out of the box for this thing I'm thinking about doing. So let's look at a closely related key. Let's try D. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to write out my diatonic chord progression in D and I'm going to do it dangerously without adding a key signature, just for fun. So remember, this one has two sharps. And if something, if a key has two sharps, they must be F sharp and C sharp. So all my F sharps and c. All my Fs and Cs are going to be sharp. So E, G, B, no sharp there. F sharp, A, C sharp, G, B, D. No sharps, A, C sharp, E, B, D. F sharp, C sharp, E, G and D. F sharp, A. Okay, so here is my diatonic chord progression in D. So here it is in G. Here it is in D. So let's look at what's different, right? Let's just notate what chords we have here. Okay, so my possible chords are G major, A minor. I'm looking at my G here. I'm just going to write down the names of the chords. B minor. I guess I got to move this box. B minor, C major, D major, E minor, and F sharp, diminished. Let's put a space there. And then G major again. I don't need to write that one down because I've already got it. Now let's do it for D major, right? So I have D major, E minor, F sharp minor, G major, A major, B minor, C sharp diminished, and then D major again. Okay, now let's just put these back to back. And let's reorder them a little bit. The order isn't going to matter too much. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to copy these three and put them at the bottom of the list. So now we're lined up with G major, G major, A minor, A major, right? Because this is what I want to do. I want to see what chords are different. So if I want to remember, the scenario here is that I'm in G major and I want to do something just a little bit different, a little bit more colorful. I could throw an A major in, right? That's borrowing from the other key. And that's okay. It is out of key. A major is not in the key of G major. And we're still in the key of G major here, but it will add A little bit of color. Don't be afraid to go out of key. It's going to sound kind of cool. B minor is the same. C major. Now remember, C major is one that gets. C is the sharp that's added. So there is no C major or minor in the key of D. It's C sharp and it's going to be diminished. So that one we'd probably want to avoid because we always avoid the diminished chord in most kinds of songwriting type applications. D major is going to be the same. E minor is the same. And F sharp was diminished. Now, minor, that could be a good one to use too, because our F sharp diminished in the key of G we may have avoided. Because of what I just said, it's a diminished chord. But in the key of D, sorry, F sharp minor is a perfectly good chord. So what if we added an F sharp minor into our G major chord, er key. That's totally possible. We could, just by borrowing from the key of D major. My favorite one so far here is to grab the II chord, A major, and make it A major, II chord. So this is called borrowing from related keys. Sometimes we call it modal borrowing. We're not exactly doing modal borrowing quite yet. We'll talk about that shortly. Let's jump to a new video and let me. I'm just going to write a little song and I'll show you how this can work.
