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If you’re looking for a way to create some very subtle mood shifts in the songs that you write, consider the beauty that comes from replacing the tonic chord (the chord that represents the key of your song) with a minor chord. Read on to see how this works.
A perfect song for demonstrating this effect can be heard in Sting’s “Fields of Gold” from his 1993 album “Ten Summoner’s Tales.”
The song is in D major, but you can hear that the relative minor chord of that key, Bm, figures prominently in the progressions. Minor chords have a way of darkening the aura that a song creates.
With this particular song, Sting increases that darkening effect by taking moments where we expect to hear the tonic chord (D), and switching out the D chord for Bm.
In the first verse, even though he starts out on Bm, we hear as the chords happen that D major really is the intent of the direction of the progression, and that the Bm is simply there to add a darker, more introspective mood.
By the time the progression for the first section of verse 1 has happened, we hear Bm return:
The song would have worked perfectly well if all the Bm chords at the start and finish were actually D chords. But by giving us Bm, Sting slightly increases the size of the palette of chords, and more importantly, offers a more complex.
What we expect: D G D |Bm G D G/B A D
What we get: Bm G D |Bm G D G/B A Bm
In music theory terms, the Bm chord is the vi-chord — the relative minor chord — of the key of D major. The D major chord uses the three notes D-F#-A, and the B minor chord uses B-D-F#. As you can see, two of the notes (the D and F#) are in common between these two chords, and that’s why Bm will often work as a substitute for D.
If you want to experiment with this kind of minor chord substitution in your own songs, do the following:
- Choose a song and determine its key. (If you’re not sure how to do this, check out this article, “How to Know What Key Your New Chord Progression Is In“.)
- Write out one or more of the chord progressions you used.
- Any time there’s a tonic chord, particularly at the end of a musical line, replace it with the vi-chord from your song’s key.
Keep in mind that this kind of replacing the tonic with a vi-chord has a fairly distinctive sound, and it can quickly sound a bit overused if you make this substitution too often.
But for a quick, easy way to darken the mood of your song, or to create a more powerful sense of melancholy, the relative minor substitution is a great choice. For mood control, look also at your key choice (as that will affect where the voice lies), playing style and instrument choice.
You can also consider changing the IV chord to a ii-chord, as we hear in the final verse of Eagle’s “Take It Easy.”
Written by Gary Ewer. Follow Gary on Twitter.
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