- Hi, in this quick tip, I'm going to try to provide
a reasonably brief answer to a question
that a number of people have sent me
and it's on the question of modulation.
What does modulation mean?
It means changing key
from one key to another key and the people asking questions
are asking how do we do that or people have said
"Well, I've tried to change key in a piece that I've written
"and actually, it doesn't sound very good
"because there's a kind of, sort of big, bumpy moment
"when we suddenly go from one key to another,"
and it possibly sounds a little bit like a driver
trying to change gear without using the clutch
and if you're a driver, you'll know what that does.
Anyway, let's have a quick look
at how to modulate, how to change key.
I've written a short piece on the board there,
it's eight bars long, two phrases,
we're in the key of D major
and the first phrase is in D major
and the second phrase modulates to A major.
So, how do I do that?
Well, if you want to have a really smooth modulation,
that effectively uses that musical clutch very nicely,
you have to use something called a pivot chord.
Now, what is a pivot chord?
A pivot chord is a chord
that's common to the key that you're leaving
and to the key that you're joining.
So, we're going from D major to A major
and what you'll find is that
there are some chords in D major
that also come in A major, which is quite useful.
So, here's a scale of D major.
And if I put chords on all those notes
by taking the bottom notes in each case of the scale
and adding the third and the fifth note above it,
I get these chords.
That's what we call
chord I or a chord of D,
chord II or a chord of E minor,
chord III or a chord of F-sharp minor,
chord IV or a chord of G,
chord V or a chord of A,
chord VI or a chord of B minor,
chord VII or a C-sharp diminished, and then I come back
to chord I again, which is that chord of D.
Now, if I go through the scale of A major.
I can also put chords in the same way so here's A major,
here's the first chord, the second, the third, the fourth,
the fifth, the sixth, the seventh
and then I come back to the first.
Now, if I look at some of those chords in A major,
I'll discover they're also chords in D major.
So, if I look at chord I in A major,
which is the chord of A, well, that's also chord V
in the scale of D.
So, in other words, this could be a pivot chord
because it belongs to both the keys.
If I look at chord II in A major,
which is a chord of B minor, well,
that's also in the scale of D major
because in D major, that's a chord VI.
If I look at chord III in A major, well,
that doesn't come in D major,
mainly because it's got a G-sharp
and there's no G-sharp in D major
so that could not be a pivot chord.
This one, chord IV, which is a chord of D major,
is also chord I in D major so it's IV in A major,
it's I in D major so that would be a good pivot chord.
Chord V in A major is no good to us
because it's got a G-sharp in it
so that's not a chord in D major.
Chord VI in A major or a chord of F-sharp minor,
well, that's also in D major, it's chord III.
Chord VII in A major, that's not going to work,
again because it's got a G-sharp in it.
So, you see, some of these chords are not common
to the two keys so you could not use those as pivot chords
but there are quite a few chords that are common
to the two keys, so you could
use any of those as pivot chords.
So, what I've done in this case,
I've started writing in D major
and I've put the chord numbers underneath
in the key of D and I've put these chords in the middle,
if you'd prefer to read it that way and then,
from this point onwards, all the chords are in A major
because we've modulated to the new key
but this is the chosen pivot chord
because this chord is chord I in D major, it's a D chord,
D, F-sharp and it would have A in it to complete the chord
but that chord, D, F-sharp, A, is chord I in D major
but it's also chord IV in A major.
So, I like to think of a pivot chord
as like passing through a door, I'm in this room,
I want to go to the next room,
I can't walk through the wall,
I can't just appear in the next room,
I have to go through the door.
The door connects this room with the next room,
the door is kind of like the pivot chord.
So, this is our musical door, this pivot chord,
I'm choosing a chord that belongs to this key
and belongs to that key and this is the moment
at which I walk through the door and therefore,
it's going to sound perfectly smooth,
we're not going to get any bumps,
we're not going to be changing from one key to another
without using the clutch because we've used a pivot chord.
If we just fly into the new key without using a pivot chord,
that's when it's going to bump.
So, what does all this sound like, well,
let me just play you from the beginning,
this is what we've got on the board.
Here's the pivot chord.
So, you can hear that I've started in the key of D,
I've finished in the key of A,
and really the modulation wasn't a bumpy corner at all
because I used that pivot chord.
So, that's how you do it, you decide
which key you're starting in, you decide
which key you want to go to, then you look
for the possible pivot chords and you decide
which one you're going to use
and to the left of the pivot chord,
you're in the original key, to the right of the pivot chord,
you're in the new key.
Well, there's a lot more that one could say about modulation
and about using all these chords
and if you want to know more about that, then have a look
at the advanced theory package
that we've made at Music Matters,
which really covers all this in a lot more detail
but at least, in this film,
you can see how to modulate.
Have fun with it.