In this video I'm going to talk about a trick that film composers use
to create different moods and emotions with harmony.
Once you get this simple technique into your vocabulary you'll find it easier
to get away from simple diatonic harmony and make your music more colorful and expressive.
Hey guys, welcome back to my channel! My name is Ryan.
I'm a composer for film, TV, and video games,
and this channel is where we try to break down and figure out how writing music works.
For more videos about music theory, composing,
and all that other good stuff please remember to subscribe!
So today I'm talking about chromatic mediant chords,
or chords from different keys that are a third apart.
If you use these chords you can get enhanced emotional effects that you
can't really get from regular diatonic harmony.
So when I say the chords are a third apart I mean
that the root of each chord is a third away from each other.
That could be a major third or a minor third
So from C major you could go up a major third to E.
E minor, or E major, or you can go up a minor third to Eb.
Eb major, Eb minor.
In the same way from C you could go down a minor third to A to get either A minor or A major.
And you could go down a major third to Ab. So you could have either Ab major or Ab minor.
And for our purposes we're really focusing on the non-diatonic chords.
So yes, you could go down a third from C major to A minor,
but both of those chords are from the key of C or the key of G, so it doesn't really count.
They already have a relationship.
We're thinking more like C major down to A major, where there is no key that
has both of those chords native to them, so that'll be a more interesting sound.
So the way you come up with these chords is you pick your starting chord
and you move either a major or minor third up or down to the quality that you want,
whether that's major or minor, and we'll get into that.
I haven't really found a good rule for when you might want to move up or down a third.
I think it depends on the context and really you should just try the
different options out when you're writing and see which sounds good for the moment.
But with the right combinations and chord movements you can come
up with some really interesting expressive sounds.
So there's this idea which i've talked about before, and I'm sure I'm going
to talk about it again, in which major chords from outside your key feel more
major and minor chords from outside your key feel more minor.
So we all know that stereotypically a major
chord is happy and bright and a minor chord is sad and dark.
So when you use a major chord from outside your key it's even more happy,
it's brighter, it's stronger.
So there are four different major-minor combinations we can use and so for the
rest of this video we'll kind of look at each one of those.
We could have major to major, major to minor, minor to major, and minor to minor.
Before we get into the examples I want to point out that this is non-functional harmony.
So we're not talking about tonic, subdominant, dominant chord progression relationships.
This isn't about kind of structural points that lead us beginning, middle, and end.
This is more about using harmony for color.
So when we're going to the C major to the Eb major we don't have to think about, you know,
how does the progression work in the form.
It's more about how do these different colors contrast
and create certain moods or emotions within that context.
The emphasis is not on harmonic movement but on color and effect.
So let's start with going from a major chord up or down a third to another major chord.
I'll use this effect when I want something heroic, super happy, bold, maybe royal.
Maybe if I'm doing a comedy track and I want to keep it pretty light and quirky
then I might use this effect.
So here I'm going for like a fantasy royal fanfare in the trumpets.
We start on a D major chord and I'll move up a minor third to an F major chord.
So D major and F major are from different keys, because D major has an F# in it not an F natural.
But notice that they do also have that A in common.
So here's what something like this might sound like.
Hear how that F feels very bold and rich and strong.
Let's do another example, but this time we'll go down instead.
So in this example I'm using two different major chords from different keys,
in a quieter way, to create kind of this magical mysterious sensation.
It's not meant to be dark and threatening, so I'm using two different major chords.
Notice that I'm using the C as a pedal tone in the bass for both chords,
because the C is in the chord of C major and it's in the Ab major.
So the next thing I want to look at is major chords to a
minor chord a third away from outside the key.
So here's an example of going from a major chord
down a major third to a minor chord from outside the key.
So we're going from A major down to F minor,
and in this case there are no common tones between the two triads.
So of course the main thing to notice is just how dark it feels when we get to that F minor.
That f minor is really unexpected and much more sinister than if we had used
just a regular diatonic chord from the key of A minor, like a B minor or something.
The F minor, with its chromatic tones that don't really belong in the key of A major,
add to that kind of sinister, menacing, not quite right, "I don't belong here" quality.
I use the major to major much more often than I use the major to minor,
because in most cases I'm trying to create an overall happy feel
instead of going for a specific moment of really happy to really dark, all of a sudden.
So when I'm writing a track I tend to focus more on like types,
but there are cases where you can use both.
Now let's look at some examples of minor to minor.
So here we have an example of minor chord to minor chord from outside the diatonic key.
In this case I both went down a third and up a third to show that
you can go both ways and you can get some interesting effects when you do.
So here we got a very kind of classic bad guy villain sound.
Maybe from like a Star Wars movie.
And it's very clearly sinister and dark because of those minor chords,
and that extra minor quality that we're getting from that movement by thirds.
That Bb minor, that Eb minor don't really belong to G minor and so they're giving us
those kind of strange chromatic tones, making the whole thing darker overall.
And then the last one we have is minor to major.
So coming up with an example from A minor going to A major was a bit
tricky because it's not really a scenario you find yourself in a lot, where you have a theme
that you want overall dark with these punchy bright moments of happiness.
So what i've come up with here is that it's not really super sad or dark, it's a little light.
I did it in 3/4 and the harp, so it's kind of floating along.
And then going from the D minor to the F# major or from the D minor to the B major
is a little more gentle.
Maybe a little romantic or smooth as opposed to just going from, like, dark and sinister to happy.
But like I said, it was a bit of a trickier one to get to.
For another video about non-diatonic harmony check
out my video on secondary dominance and I'll see you in the next one.