Hey Friend,

All this talk of determining notes in keys and understanding patterns and how all this relates to music fundamental has my mind going in all sorts of directions. 

I pointed out at the beginning of or Circle of Fifths discussion that G major is the next key in line that we're going to study. We'll look at the basic harmonic progression of G major (the chords we know belong), and of course we'll explore some substitutions as well.

Something you'll come to realize quickly is we have a number of chords that are the same as what we saw in C major. I'm not going to rehash those with a week-long discussion of chords we've already looked at. I'll point you back to the weekly review for those in the email where I talk about the chord.

But speaking of the similarities of keys and the chords common to both, it got me thinking about how artists like to slip key changes into songs. A key change in a song is known as a "modulation." It was a little confusing to me, because modulation has a different meaning if you do any synthesizer programming. You "modulate" a wavelength to create a different sound. I had never heard it in the context of key change.

As I was thinking about key changes, i did a quick search on "common key modulations" and found the next thing I'll be studying in more depth. 

I think everyone can recognize when the key changes in a song. You may not know what to call it, but you can hear the difference in how the entire center of a song changes, either up or down. And yet, we don't question it because it works, and it peaks our interest.

Turns out there are two types of modulation - direct and common chord modulation.

Direct modulation is an abrupt change in key. You know without any doubt that the key has changed. Barry Manilow is well know for this kind of key change.

One example is the song "Looks Like We Made It." The key changes abruptly at 2:40 in the video, moving up one semitone in key. Pretty simple to hear, right.

The more complex form of modulation is Common Chord modulation. This involves looking at chords that are common between two keys and picking one of those as a pivot chord to switch from one key to the next. 

A great example we can look to is "Here, There and Everywhere" by the Beatles. There are multiple modulations, but they all work together seamlessly. If you're at all interested in the four keys (!) involved in the song, read this analysis.

As you can imagine, this requires you to know the chords from each key. Are you maybe starting to understand more why having a little knowledge of keys and how chords are constructed can help you advance your skills and musical understanding?

Tomorrow, we'll get started on the key of G major. Rock it, people!

Peace~

Dave

P.S. - The title of today's message comes from a song by David Lee Roth called "Two Fools A Minute." (Steve Vai played for Diamond Dave on this album).