Hey Friend,

Sounds exciting, yes?

Quick review...

Major keys have relative minor keys and vice versa. These relative keys share the same notes - the only difference is which note happens to be the root (tonic).

It's really easy to determine what the relative key is, too. On guitar, you just slide down three frets (half steps) and the resulting note is the root of the relative minor key. 

If you happen to be playing a song that is in a minor key and you want to figure out where its relative major is, just slide up three frets from the root note of the minor key.

If all you have to go on is the scale, move back two scale notes or forward two notes if you're starting in a major or minor key, respectively.

On To The Chords...

This is all good stuff to know if you aspire to play lead guitar, but it's equally as helpful with chords.

Just as the scale notes are the same between relative major and minor scales, so are the chords. So if you know the harmonic progression for a major key, you automatically know the triads for its relative minor key. Let's look at C major and A minor again.

No sharps, no flats, just natural notes.

Now let's review the C major chords:

We good? This making sense so far?

Like the scales, the harmonic progression for minor keys uses the same sequence of chord shapes - again, we just shift which chord happens to be the root. This is what the minor key harmonic progression looks like:

As you can see, for the A minor key, the chords are the same as what we have in C major. The root just shifted from C to A minor. The chords themselves stay in the same order, but we have a new starting place.

Try playing through those chords first in the major harmonic progression, then in the minor key harmonic progression. Notice how the starting point really does affect the overall feel of the progression. 

Tell you what, I'll put together some exercises for you demonstrating this. 

For now, gotta run. See you tomorrow!

Peace~

Dave