I just want to thank you for your lessons, they have finally made clear concepts that I have gotten vague, foggy answers to in the past, and your channel has renewed my interest in theory, and the guitar as a whole. Thank you very much
I shared this on my Google+ page and recommended they bring along a Circle of fifths graphic while they watch. This gave me a much greater understanding of how the Circle works!
Love your channel. Best channel out there. You have an awesome way of explaining things. I think I saw you explain this in a different video. You explain it using bar chords. Visually is easier to understand. Another thought. The song closing time by Semi Sonic uses this too.
Great lesson, as always. For those who don't know it, "Modulation" is the term that describes how that CCR tune Ian used as an illustration seamlessly shifts keys, from verse to chorus. Also, at around the 4:30 min. mark he mentions not being sure the expression "parallel keys" applies and his gut was right as that concept really belongs to modal interchange (passing from one tonality to the other) and is defined as " major and minor keys that share the same tonic note but have different key signatures"...For those wanting to delve deeper into this kind of stuff, when just "borrowing" a chord from a closely related key (contiguous on the circle of fifth) reading about and understanding the concept of "pivot chord" might be of interest as this type of chord is one that belongs to two keys and from which a progression can "pivot" in either direction (new/old key) even if most of his examples do not actually involve switching keys.
As for the topic of modal interchange, a frequent occurence of this is found in popular music which often mixes Ionian and myxolydian modes sharing the same tonic note. The "C-G" progression of the "you are only coming through in waves" part of PF's "Comfortably Numb" is a great illustration as coming shortly after the Bm-A-G-Em verse (in Bm or Dmaj, depending on how you choose to look at it) it introduces a C chord that is not diatonic to the scale which contains a C#, not a C...In actuality, that C chord is harmonized from D mixolydian and "borrowed" from its parent scale, G. So, using" D Ionian and Mixolydian "parallel scales" gives you a same tonal center as well as different harmonic possibilities...
In country the 2 major of the scale is often added, which is the 5th of the 5th. In the C scale, the chords would be C F D G7. The D chord resolves to the G7 before returning to the C.
Just charted out your lesson and noticed a pattern. Am I right to say the major chord before and after your root chord can be used as borrowed chords. eg: in C you can use B or D.....in D you can use C or E etc....Another question can TWO of these borrowed chords be used in the same chord progression? Thx ,great stuff, this is what sets you and Sean apart from alot of youtube guitar teachers.
Ian, I'm not sure if someone answered your question as to "I'm not really sure what it's called" in reference to borrowing D to work in C. I use Closely Related Key to explain this. This is a key which is one accidental away from another, like C and G. That's why their chords work so well together when a short modulation occurs. Secondly, Thanks! Thanks! Thanks! I had not played guitar for a long time. A friend was in town playing a show and I went and got inspired. That inspiration led me to you and your lessons. I have played every day since the beginning of June (other than on vacation). You have taught me and obviously so many others so much. I love the theory you throw in (I'm a theory nerd), and everything else. Again, Thanks!
This makes a lot of sense.ive been learning some Grateful Dead songs and I’m always trying to figure out what key and trying to figure out what there doing.thanks to your videos for that im so into the theory now made guitar fun again.anyway,they tend to start in a key or parts of them are in a key then there’s always a chord or chords that are not.almost every song so far.this really helps in understanding maybe what they were thinking.ik,jerry was really smart theory wise he must have had thoughts about borrowing chords like this or like you said there’s a million ways to think about it.
I've seen about every video you have; love your channel and everything you have out so far. Doing your blues masterclass slowly to make sure I get the concepts down. Just wanted to preface this comment with that so I can say that the graphics make it VERY clear as to what you're explaining. Your explanations already top knotch, but I feel with the graphics you did in this video, it makes it almost impossible to misunderstand. As much as you hate editing, it'd be awesome to see these kinds of graphics in every video that can really utilize that teensy-bit of extra clarification.
Interesting! I use borrowed chords from parallel minor keys and secondary dominants but have not used this approach of borrowing chords from the next key in the circle of 5ths. It makes a lot of sense and you can hear this happening in lots, especially in 1960s garage rock songs, folk and punk to name a few. It's the obvious thing you do when writing a song by ear and it's often what happens when you are jamming and coming up with songs in a band. It's good to have a bit of a reasoned approach to how to do this so it becomes something in your toolkit as well as something that happens by chance when coming up with progressions.
Thats cool, I'm doing something similar in a song im working on actually first 2 chords are 1 - 3 of A and the third and fourth are 1-3 of G :) Awesome explanation thanks :D
Great stuff. I made myself & friends some large badges with a colourful Circle of Fifths. They look pretty good and even non musicians think they look cool AND they're always there - pinned to your T Shirt. p.s. Many schools should have a badge maker, I borrowed my daughters.
to connect this back to scale intervals, it's worth noting that every time you have a perfect 5th, you have a perfect 4th if you switch the root. e.g. between C and G, it's a fifth if C is the root, and a fourth if C is the root.
My favorite bluegrass song has this progression and I love it. Thanks Ian! I know you don't like that genre but it's Salt Creek by Tony Rice...he lights up the neck on this one!
Very cool this chord borrowign thing....Just noticed a song in the Key of C I'm working on that one phrase in the chorus moves from a Dm to an E or E7(?). It's a "surprise", meant to stand out it seems, and "fits" even though E maj/dominant not diatonic to C Major.
What about playing lead over borrowed chords? Great video, btw. This is something I've always wondered about, and just accepted that I must not understand music theory at all! lol But this makes sense. Thanks.
Thanks to you and Sean I can't learn a song without thinking what key and or mode is this. I have been strumming on Sitting on the dock of the bay. I can't figure it out. When I saw this I thought alright now I'll crack it. But nope still can't figure it out. Was this one of those times like you mentioned towards the end of this video where he just used major chords and followed his ears.
Great video! Some of my favorite borrowed chords in a major key would be a major 3rd chord instead of minor, and a minor 4 chord instead of major 4. Try em out!
Well in theory this kind of the start of chromatic harmony, if you have C-emin--Amin-Gor-G7 there are kinda spots you can have cadences(technically authentic cadences) a authentic Cadence is when a chord progression goes V-I so what you're doing when you borrow chords is have a mini cadence by taking the V chord out of the major key(if the chord is minor take from the parallel major key Ex: if the chord is aminor take the V chord from A major which is emajor not eminor) you have to borrow from. So in Cmaj-emin-Amin-G you can fit a Dmajof (the V chord of g major)between the a minor a and G so chord progression is mow spiced up so it's C-emin-Amin-D-G, now here comes the tricky thing all these chords are in Gmajor lmao so you can kinda use this trick to change keys, but what happens when when you take the V of emin the iii chord you go to the emajor scale and take the V which is Bmajor so you can now put in a bmajor and make the chord progression C-B-emin-Amin-DMaj-G or G7 and when you Borrow chords you can also borrow them white the 7 from the key which makes them all dominant 7s so to be jazzy the new spices up chords is Cmaj7-Bdom7-emin7-amin7-DDom7or dmajor-gmajor or Gdom7, you cannot take the five chord form the vii Idk why but you can't
Is there a method to determine where in the progression the borrowed chord goes? Or is it as simple as finding a key that shares two major chords, snagging a major chord from that key, and putting it wherever?
Is there a formula for using inverted chords ? saw a video and George Harrison had a couple different C chords in a progression. I think one was add9 and the other I can't remember. your videos are great......cool fish
"Presented it well enough"!? IAN! You and Sean are like the best teachers on RUclips, you could be drunk off your ass trying to explain the circle of fifths to your cat, and it'd know it better than most of these other teachers do! and in all seriousness, that would be a hilarious, albeit unprofessional, video if you ever decide to get totally hammered with a camera and a cat nearby... Just sayin'
simple, effective, useful. Video is still not finished but you know you'll use this stuff a lot...another great one Mr Stich. BTW does the number of viewer of your video with the cat at the TV game show went up since you spoke about it in your video with Mr Sean ?
Great video! Is this the same basic principle as "Secondary Dominants", even though in this example you're using major triads instead of 7th chords? It seems like another way of thinking of it is changing the ii chord into the dominant of the IV chord by making it major. Am I on the right track here?
So, when you come across a song with, say, multiple "borrowed" chords, you can determine the actual key of the song by finding two major chords which are alphabetically adjacent and reverse engineer from there referencing them as the 4 and 5 chords? I can see the borrowed chords muddying up that method of key determination.
Thanks for the lesson on an interesting topic. So it seems that a mental shortcut to the same result could be that major chords built on the 2nd and flat 7th of a given key are fair game as chords to play in that key. I say this because I was staring at a table of scales from the circle of 5ths while watching your video and noticed that the 2nd of a given key is always the same as the clockwise neighbor key's 5th, and the flat 7th of a given key is the same as the counterclockwise neighbor key's 4th, in each case with the other two chords of the 1,4 & 5 matching the respective neighbor, as you explained. I'm having trouble saying what I mean, but I hope I'm making sense. So if one knows this, it seems you can just add II Maj and bVII Maj to the list of acceptable chords for a given key, without having to think about the circle of 5ths and neighboring keys etc. Does that make sense? Maybe I'm missing or falsely assuming something? Keep the cool lessons coming!
Please tell me if I'm even close to having this right cause I'm a little confused right now . O.k., The 1, 4, 5 is always major and the 2, 3, 6 is minor but derived from the major scale of course . And the chord progress is determined by the key you're playing in . is this how it works theoretically ? Thanks for another great video ;)
So you're technically switching key for a moment, but it sounds good? If you would improvise over a progression like this, is it better to switch to a different scale on the "borrowed" chord, or would the scale in the original key sound fine?
Hi Stich, can you please do a video, if you haven't already, on why the major chords i, biii and iv work. what is the theory behind this? Or could you please direct me to a place that explains it clearly.
I just want to thank you for your lessons, they have finally made clear concepts that I have gotten vague, foggy answers to in the past, and your channel has renewed my interest in theory, and the guitar as a whole. Thank you very much
I shared this on my Google+ page and recommended they bring along a Circle of fifths graphic while they watch. This gave me a much greater understanding of how the Circle works!
Great lesson stitch! Been trying to start writing songs and the borrowing chords going from verse to chorus is a huge help, thanks my man!
Always on point! Love your work, champ!
Awesome video again. After I finish going through your work I'll definitely have to check out Sean's!
This was explained effortlessly and simply, thank you for the knowledge!
Good job....enjoy these lessons a lot and has helped me progress as a guitar player.
Love your channel. Best channel out there. You have an awesome way of explaining things.
I think I saw you explain this in a different video. You explain it using bar chords. Visually is easier to understand.
Another thought. The song closing time by Semi Sonic uses this too.
Excellent lesson. I'll be watching this again to get it down!
I brought my Circle of fifths along for this session and I get it!! Great lesson.
This is awesome! Thanks so much for the lesson :D
Thanks. You made me crack it. Been making songs for 40 yrs. Without knowing this. Thanks and Merry Cristmas 2020 ❤️❤️❤️🎶🎶🎶
Yes, this is starting to make sense within my personal evolution, now. Thanks!
Great lesson, as always. For those who don't know it, "Modulation" is the term that describes how that CCR tune Ian used as an illustration seamlessly shifts keys, from verse to chorus. Also, at around the 4:30 min. mark he mentions not being sure the expression "parallel keys" applies and his gut was right as that concept really belongs to modal interchange (passing from one tonality to the other) and is defined as " major and minor keys that share the same tonic note but have different key signatures"...For those wanting to delve deeper into this kind of stuff, when just "borrowing" a chord from a closely related key (contiguous on the circle of fifth) reading about and understanding the concept of "pivot chord" might be of interest as this type of chord is one that belongs to two keys and from which a progression can "pivot" in either direction (new/old key) even if most of his examples do not actually involve switching keys.
As for the topic of modal interchange, a frequent occurence of this is found in popular music which often mixes Ionian and myxolydian modes sharing the same tonic note. The "C-G" progression of the "you are only coming through in waves" part of PF's "Comfortably Numb" is a great illustration as coming shortly after the Bm-A-G-Em verse (in Bm or Dmaj, depending on how you choose to look at it) it introduces a C chord that is not diatonic to the scale which contains a C#, not a C...In actuality, that C chord is harmonized from D mixolydian and "borrowed" from its parent scale, G. So, using" D Ionian and Mixolydian "parallel scales" gives you a same tonal center as well as different harmonic possibilities...
Thanks for everything Mr. Stich
That's a good way to think about it. Thanks.
In country the 2 major of the scale is often added, which is the 5th of the 5th. In the C scale, the chords would be C F D G7. The D chord resolves to the G7 before returning to the C.
Thx ..I've been waiting for this one.
Just charted out your lesson and noticed a pattern. Am I right to say the major chord before and after your root chord can be used as borrowed chords. eg: in C you can use B or D.....in D you can use C or E etc....Another question can TWO of these borrowed chords be used in the same chord progression? Thx ,great stuff, this is what sets you and Sean apart from alot of youtube guitar teachers.
"Hey Joe" follows the circle of 5th and sounds great -- C,G,D,A,E
Ian, I'm not sure if someone answered your question as to "I'm not really sure what it's called" in reference to borrowing D to work in C. I use Closely Related Key to explain this. This is a key which is one accidental away from another, like C and G. That's why their chords work so well together when a short modulation occurs.
Secondly, Thanks! Thanks! Thanks! I had not played guitar for a long time. A friend was in town playing a show and I went and got inspired. That inspiration led me to you and your lessons. I have played every day since the beginning of June (other than on vacation). You have taught me and obviously so many others so much. I love the theory you throw in (I'm a theory nerd), and everything else. Again, Thanks!
This makes a lot of sense.ive been learning some Grateful Dead songs and I’m always trying to figure out what key and trying to figure out what there doing.thanks to your videos for that im so into the theory now made guitar fun again.anyway,they tend to start in a key or parts of them are in a key then there’s always a chord or chords that are not.almost every song so far.this really helps in understanding maybe what they were thinking.ik,jerry was really smart theory wise he must have had thoughts about borrowing chords like this or like you said there’s a million ways to think about it.
I've seen about every video you have; love your channel and everything you have out so far. Doing your blues masterclass slowly to make sure I get the concepts down. Just wanted to preface this comment with that so I can say that the graphics make it VERY clear as to what you're explaining. Your explanations already top knotch, but I feel with the graphics you did in this video, it makes it almost impossible to misunderstand.
As much as you hate editing, it'd be awesome to see these kinds of graphics in every video that can really utilize that teensy-bit of extra clarification.
This did help, thanks!
Always wondered about the chords that were major instead of minor. Thank you!
I'd really love some more song writing videos along with the soloing. That is for the great content!
thank you Daddy Phish
Interesting! I use borrowed chords from parallel minor keys and secondary dominants but have not used this approach of borrowing chords from the next key in the circle of 5ths. It makes a lot of sense and you can hear this happening in lots, especially in 1960s garage rock songs, folk and punk to name a few. It's the obvious thing you do when writing a song by ear and it's often what happens when you are jamming and coming up with songs in a band. It's good to have a bit of a reasoned approach to how to do this so it becomes something in your toolkit as well as something that happens by chance when coming up with progressions.
Thank you for this!!!!!
Thats cool, I'm doing something similar in a song im working on actually first 2 chords are 1 - 3 of A and the third and fourth are 1-3 of G :)
Awesome explanation thanks :D
Excellent!!
Great stuff. I made myself & friends some large badges with a colourful Circle of Fifths. They look pretty good and even non musicians think they look cool AND they're always there - pinned to your T Shirt. p.s. Many schools should have a badge maker, I borrowed my daughters.
Great Lesson!
Oh I see it... Thank You Brother!
Thx… u did ur job! Got it!
1-4-5! Don't tell me you pulled those out of a hat again Ian!
Secret cameras an' all ;-)
Discovered your channel recently. I'm in.
Happy to be here. Looking forward to your thoughtful posts. Very well done.
to connect this back to scale intervals, it's worth noting that every time you have a perfect 5th, you have a perfect 4th if you switch the root. e.g. between C and G, it's a fifth if C is the root, and a fourth if C is the root.
can't wait!
I think every song on "The Traveling Wilburys" album uses this song writing strategy.
Thanks!!!
My favorite bluegrass song has this progression and I love it. Thanks Ian! I know you don't like that genre but it's Salt Creek by Tony Rice...he lights up the neck on this one!
I love bluegrass! I’ll check it out
Great video man! Would like to see more grateful dead stuff or Frank Zappa
you my friend, know your s***!!! thank you for sharing your wisdom sensei
Very cool this chord borrowign thing....Just noticed a song in the Key of C I'm working on that one phrase in the chorus moves from a Dm to an E or E7(?). It's a "surprise", meant to stand out it seems, and "fits" even though E maj/dominant not diatonic to C Major.
What about playing lead over borrowed chords? Great video, btw. This is something I've always wondered about, and just accepted that I must not understand music theory at all! lol But this makes sense. Thanks.
God damn. Music Theory was so under rated till you came along. Also, we need a 'in the mind of Slash'. Don't you think? Cheers
StichMethod Guitar proceeds to list 100 different guitarists that should be done!! Hahah you rock! Love watching the videos and they help a lot!
Thanks to you and Sean I can't learn a song without thinking what key and or mode is this. I have been strumming on Sitting on the dock of the bay. I can't figure it out. When I saw this I thought alright now I'll crack it. But nope still can't figure it out. Was this one of those times like you mentioned towards the end of this video where he just used major chords and followed his ears.
George Harrison was a great one for weird chords-he loved the diminished family!
Am I really the first one to notice a new set and better camera quality?
Good lesson I always wondered about this stuff. It's okay u can say CCR
new camera is great
Wow, this new camera has some serious zoom going on !! Stich in HD.
Love it Ian. Now I gotta practice! By the way is that the new camera? It looks really good.
Hey man, could you do a vid on borrowing chords from modes?
Great video! Some of my favorite borrowed chords in a major key would be a major 3rd chord instead of minor, and a minor 4 chord instead of major 4. Try em out!
Examples-major 3rd chord is Santeria by Sublime and minor 4 is in so many songs, but Radiohead creep is a good example.
Well in theory this kind of the start of chromatic harmony, if you have C-emin--Amin-Gor-G7 there are kinda spots you can have cadences(technically authentic cadences) a authentic Cadence is when a chord progression goes V-I so what you're doing when you borrow chords is have a mini cadence by taking the V chord out of the major key(if the chord is minor take from the parallel major key Ex: if the chord is aminor take the V chord from A major which is emajor not eminor) you have to borrow from. So in Cmaj-emin-Amin-G you can fit a Dmajof (the V chord of g major)between the a minor a and G so chord progression is mow spiced up so it's C-emin-Amin-D-G, now here comes the tricky thing all these chords are in Gmajor lmao so you can kinda use this trick to change keys, but what happens when when you take the V of emin the iii chord you go to the emajor scale and take the V which is Bmajor so you can now put in a bmajor and make the chord progression C-B-emin-Amin-DMaj-G or G7 and when you Borrow chords you can also borrow them white the 7 from the key which makes them all dominant 7s so to be jazzy the new spices up chords is Cmaj7-Bdom7-emin7-amin7-DDom7or dmajor-gmajor or Gdom7, you cannot take the five chord form the vii Idk why but you can't
Is there a method to determine where in the progression the borrowed chord goes? Or is it as simple as finding a key that shares two major chords, snagging a major chord from that key, and putting it wherever?
Is there a formula for using inverted chords ? saw a video and George Harrison had a couple different C chords in a progression. I think one was add9 and the other I can't remember. your videos are great......cool fish
"Presented it well enough"!?
IAN! You and Sean are like the best teachers on RUclips, you could be drunk off your ass trying to explain the circle of fifths to your cat, and it'd know it better than most of these other teachers do!
and in all seriousness, that would be a hilarious, albeit unprofessional, video if you ever decide to get totally hammered with a camera and a cat nearby... Just sayin'
how about a Major and minor of the same chord please, how does that ever fit? I've been wondering about this forever!
simple, effective, useful. Video is still not finished but you know you'll use this stuff a lot...another great one Mr Stich.
BTW does the number of viewer of your video with the cat at the TV game show went up since you spoke about it in your video with Mr Sean ?
it will come...it will come...
tnx, dude
love that beard
Great video! Is this the same basic principle as "Secondary Dominants", even though in this example you're using major triads instead of 7th chords? It seems like another way of thinking of it is changing the ii chord into the dominant of the IV chord by making it major. Am I on the right track here?
So, when you come across a song with, say, multiple "borrowed" chords, you can determine the actual key of the song by finding two major chords which are alphabetically adjacent and reverse engineer from there referencing them as the 4 and 5 chords? I can see the borrowed chords muddying up that method of key determination.
FYI proper term for the 5th of the 5th of actually key you are playing is secondary dominant , if you mentioned and I didn't hear disregard this
Hi. Can we say that the song "Fortunate Son" starts in the key of G Mixolydian and than turn in G Ionic (major)?
Great Lesson!
yes, so is better to say that starts in G mixo. "mode" or "progression" and turns in G ionian?
The key starts from C turning in G, right?
All I heard was "long story shart".
7:51
Dude my girlfriend lost it lol.
hahahahaha
lmao...Do it!!!
If you're being serious I'll send you $20 right now lol. I wear a medium, black preferred.
Thanks for the lesson on an interesting topic. So it seems that a mental shortcut to the same result could be that major chords built on the 2nd and flat 7th of a given key are fair game as chords to play in that key.
I say this because I was staring at a table of scales from the circle of 5ths while watching your video and noticed that the 2nd of a given key is always the same as the clockwise neighbor key's 5th, and the flat 7th of a given key is the same as the counterclockwise neighbor key's 4th, in each case with the other two chords of the 1,4 & 5 matching the respective neighbor, as you explained. I'm having trouble saying what I mean, but I hope I'm making sense.
So if one knows this, it seems you can just add II Maj and bVII Maj to the list of acceptable chords for a given key, without having to think about the circle of 5ths and neighboring keys etc.
Does that make sense? Maybe I'm missing or falsely assuming something? Keep the cool lessons coming!
Yes absolutely. I was just thinking of it as a shortcut that could be used after understanding the 'why', which you explained so well.
Makes sense, Ian. One question though; In the example of the CCR song, couldn't you just say that there is a key change from verse to chorus?
I love you
Please tell me if I'm even close to having this right cause I'm a little confused right now . O.k., The 1, 4, 5 is always major and the 2, 3, 6 is minor but derived from the major scale of course . And the chord progress is determined by the key you're playing in . is this how it works theoretically ? Thanks for another great video ;)
So you're technically switching key for a moment, but it sounds good? If you would improvise over a progression like this, is it better to switch to a different scale on the "borrowed" chord, or would the scale in the original key sound fine?
Ian would this be notated as a key switch or same key with an incidental if being written out? Look at me all serious. LOL
Hi Stich, can you please do a video, if you haven't already, on why the major chords i, biii and iv work. what is the theory behind this? Or could you please direct me to a place that explains it clearly.
I can! That’s the Beatles favorite btw
StichMethod Guitar thanks man, I'll have a look at some Beatles and see what i can find. 👍
WOW MAN... How do I send you 5 dollars? ...like right now? Pay Pal?
Heard Keith Richards say "if it doesn't sound good don't play it, if it sounds good play it", makes sense to me.
lol typical rock star talk. most of these guys have a more solid understanding of theory than theyd care to admit to
Circle of Stitch..
Ian, do you teach beginners? If so, do you do it by Skype? Cheers!!
niiiiiiice!
My brain hurts.
You should get a degree in blowing people’s minds
It’s hanging on my wall. 😉
what?
nothing to be sorry about.. i love ur lessons and aproach..and learned alot from you..tnx for answering and making these videos
At the end of the day don't u just play what sounds good and disregard what doesn't
Right out of the shower. I bet your beard smells patchouli.