In this lecture, J. Anthony Allen introduces minor keys, contrasting them with major keys and explaining how the diatonic chord progression differs in a minor context. He demonstrates the emotional shift that occurs when a familiar major‑key song (the Beatles' "Hey Jude") is transposed into a minor key, highlighting the darker, creepier quality that minor tonality can impart. Allen then outlines four systematic ways to derive a minor scale: (1) altering a major scale, (2) counting whole‑ and half‑step intervals, (3) using the relative minor, and (4) using the parallel minor. He emphasizes that the relative‑minor method is the most straightforward for quick identification, but walks through each technique to deepen understanding of minor‑scale construction and its relationship to major scales.
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Okay, at long last, it's time to talk about minor keys. So we know enough about major keys now, I think to start focusing on minor. So in this section, we're going to focus on minor keys, scales and chords. Kind of we're going to do the diatonic chord progression. We already know what minor chords are, right? We saw that in the last class. We saw that if we're in a major key and we look at all our possible chords in a major key, we know that there's a couple minor chords in there, right? But as we learn a minor scale and then we apply that scale to a key and we apply that key to all the possible chords in that key. Meaning in other words, the diatonic chord progression for a minor key, we have a different pattern that emerges, right? So in a major key, it was, you know, major, minor, minor, major, major, minor, diminished major was our diatonic chord progression. The pattern is going to be different in a minor key. In fact, there's going to be a lot of things different. But the reason I've waited this long to give you minor keys is I want you to get comfortable with major keys because there's a lot of about minor keys that we can learn easier by relating it to the minor or the major key. Right? So for example, the notes in a minor key, we can count half steps and whole steps, but it's easier to think about the major key and then what notes need to get altered. Right? We're going to go through that in just a minute. First, before we do that, I thought I'd play you a little example of what kind of effect a minor key can have on a song. So check this out. You probably know this song. This is hey Jude by the Beatles. Let me just play a touch of it.
Hey Jude, don't make it bad. Take a sad song and make it better. Remember to let her into your heart. Then you can start to make it better.
Okay, so that doesn't have an overly happy sound to it, but it is in a major key. Okay, so this is in, I believe it's in C major. And that doesn't mean it's like super happy. And the minor core version of it would be super sad by any means. When you're in a major key, you can make kind of sad sounding stuff. But just as an interesting example, what if we could hear this song in a minor key? Well, through modern technology we can do that pretty easily. So let's check it out. Now what this is going to do is it basically sounds just kind of Creepy, but it's worth hearing. So all the notes are the same except we've kind of remapped them into a minor key.
Hey Jude, don't make it bad
Make
a sad song and make it better Remember to let her into your heart Then you can start to make it better Hate you.
Okay, so what happened there? What happened was a song that starts off, you know, kind of a sad sounding song in terms of the chords even in a major key. And then we push it onto a minor key, it gets just kind of creepy, right, because the minor key just makes it sound darker, right? Like it's got a little bit more dissonance in it. And dissonance means two notes are clashing. They don't sound good next to each other. And that gives it that kind of darker, creepier sound. Now, not everything using a minor key is dark and creepy, so don't get that in your head. But I wanted to play you this example to show you the kind of dramatic effect it can have on switching to a minor key. So keep that in mind. You can find these all over the Internet if you search around. I was just doing it. You can find people that have made minor key versions of stuff. Like, I've just found a whole bunch of like Nintendo old, like Nintendo Super Mario Brothers theme songs that have been put in like, minor keys. Really fascinating to listen to. So just search around the Internet for that. You'll find them. Okay, so moving on, let's talk about how to find the notes in our minor scale. Now, there's four ways we can do it. We can find the notes of the minor scale by either looking at the major scale and then altering it a little bit to turn it into a minor scale. We're going to look at that one first. Then we can look at just counting up half steps and whole steps to get up to build the scale. Then we can look at something called a relative minor, which is again using the major scale to figure out our relative minor minor. And then a fourth way is we can use something called a parallel scale, which is a way of another way of using a major scale to figure out the minor scale. Now, to be honest with you, the easiest of those four, the one where if you were in a key and someone just jumped in your face and said, figure out the minor key. The easiest one is relative, using the relative scale, which we're going to do. But I want to go through all four of these ways because I really want you to understand how we make the minor scale and what the minor scale is made up of. So, first, let's talk about altering a major scale to find ourselves a minor scale.
