Hey Friend,

It was nearly one year ago that we started looking at triads in relation to the keys that they occupy. It’s a little hard for me to believe that it’s been that long! 

Even harder to believe is that we haven’t covered more ground, since to this point, we’ve only looked at five major and five minor keys.

Way back in June 2016, we started looking at the key of C major. I showed you each of the seven chords that occur naturally within the key. 

Along the way, you also got exposed to the scales that make the key. Since there’s very specific patterns that define scales and keys, and we repeated those patterns over and again, you should be somewhat comfortable with them by now (unless you’re new to the group).

Once we got through C major, we used the Circle of Fifths to direct us to the next key to study. That took us to G major. You can read about the Circle of Fifths here if you need a refresher. 

Most of us are primarily Rockers, so as I worked through teaching you about keys, the tougher the keys got (with an increasing number of sharp notes), and the more I realized we don’t see too many songs written outside the first five major keys.

These keys are C, G, D, A and E.

Once we finished studying the major keys through E major, I decided it was time to mix it up a bit and look at the minor side of the Circle.

Each major key has a minor key that matches it. We call the keys that coincide “relatives.” Each major has a relative minor, and each minor has a relative major key.

When keys are relative, they not only share the same scale notes, but the same chords. The difference between the relative major and minor is simply the note you start the scale on. 

If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. The same notes in the same order are going to create the same triads.

Here are the minor keys we studied:

How do I know what the relative minor key is of a major key? Easy.

Look at the Circle of Fifths chart again. The outer circle show major keys and the inner circle shows the relative minor key.

Another easy way to figure it out is to find the root note of your major key on your guitar and move your finger down three frets. The new note is the root of the relative minor key. 

If the song is in a minor key, just reverse. Move your finger up three frets to find the relative major.

Five major and five minor keys - those make up the majority of all the Rock, Pop, Country and Blues songs out there. 

Over time, we’ll look in more depth at the uncommon keys (there's twelve major and minor keys each, after all), but for now, we’ve got a good foundation to start working with some of the variations on the chords we now know.

That’s where we’re going to go next. We’ll start with Seven chords. There’s lots of material there - dominant, major and minor 7 chords - so buckle up. 

Peace~

Dave