Chord Progressions in Minor Keys ?

JohnnyReggae

Looking to expand my music theory knowledge. I've been looking at chord progressions in Major keys and there are some general rules (made to be broken of course) with regard to which notes follow each other in order to create resolution. eg. in a Major Key IV or V generally follows I, VI or IV generally follows III, etc...

My question is do these general rules also apply for the Minor Keys ? If not, what are the general rules for chord progressions in Minor Keys ? I've not sat down for any length and tried it for myself.

guitarboy2828

Hmm.. If i understand what you are asking. It's not as simple as that really. In a Scale, certain chords will be minor, major and diminished...

An example of the C scale..

With C major being your key, you would usually play a C, Am, F, G.. Not in that order, but those are the chords that go well with any song in C major (Goodbye my lover - James Blunt, Superman - five for fighting.. etc)

Now how that works is this.. in a C major you get C D E F G A B C
And that works out to be:
Cmaj
Dmin
Emin
Fmaj
Gmaj
Amin
Bdim
Cmaj

So.. In saying that.. Am is the relative minor of a C major.. So if you were playing in Am, you would actually be playing in C major because its the same key.

http://korsmo-tech.com/Circle%20of%20Fifths%20wheel.gif

That shows you the minor's relationship to the major..

Not sure if i actually answered your question or not! ???

JohnnyReggae

Thanks for the reply..... but not quite the answer I was looking for. I understand what you were saying with regards to the relation of major and minor chords in a given scale. Actually learnt some theory this morning about how that is derived, as apposed to have taken it as gospel up to now. ie. in the scale of C you get, C-Dm-Em-F-G-Am-Bm or Bdim7

My question was more about chord progressions. eg. I-VI-IV-V, in the scale of C you get C-Am-F-G as a progression. This progression works because melodically the notes flow easily from one to the next based on their positions in the scale.

The general rule of thumb with regards to a Major chord progression is: (image taken from GuitarNoise.com)

Can this rule of thumb be used for chord progressions with Minor Keys/Scales, and if not what is the general rules for minor chord progressions ?

[deleted]

Yes this can be used for minor scales too, except your roman numerals will look like this:
i VI iv v .(i is minor as opposed to major)
If you were basing your chords on the harmonic scale you chords would look like this,
i- ii dim-III-iv-v-VI-VII-i

It depends what floats your boat, but the position of the note in the scale holds the same importance in both the major and minor, ie. V is dominant(in name and nature) and so forth. Get a feel for each note in the scale to understand chord progressions.

JohnnyReggae

Thanks Viccy. Using the theory I learnt yesterday I figured out the minor/major chord sequence for the harmonic minor scale you mentioned. It is quite simple once you understand how it works.

I get what you're saying about the relation of notes in the scale and that they remain the same in terms of resolution. Now to sit and play around with things to see what I can come up with.

Thanks again for the help ?

I'm totally self-taught, so I'm a little slow on the uptake. You Can teach old dogs new tricks... it just takes a little longer....