I have been out the music theory game for a while now and I never got to how to do key changes.

Anyone care to enlighten me on good way to use key changes in tracks, how to do them, and why?

I understand going to the relative major/minor of the scale your working in but it never sounds as good as tracks I hear.

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Processing a highly structured and complex pattern of sensory input as a unified percept of "music" is probably one of the most elaborate features of the human brain.....understanding how music is perceived and how it may elicit intense sensations is far from being understood.

I don't hear key changes in trance very often, but they're pretty common in pop music. A common way to do this is to just jump up a half-step or whole-step, especially coming out of a bridge, or when you repeat a chorus/main theme, particularly at the end.

Another way is through the use of pivot chords - chords that the original key and the destination key have in common. For example, Cmaj and Dmaj both share the chords Emin and Gmaj - these are the iii and V chords in Cmaj, and the ii and IV chords in Dmaj. So, you can use those chords to bridge the transposition from Cmaj to Dmaj, which is especially useful if you use them to build up to an Amaj7 (i.e., the dominant chord in Dmaj), which then resolves to Dmaj (i.e., the new key). Hopefully that makes sense, but here's a basic example that starts in Cmaj and ends in Dmaj:

Cmaj | Fmaj | Cmaj | Gmaj | Emin | Amaj7 | Dmaj

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One way of doing is to jump to a perfect cadence into the key you want to go in. Use the V chord from the chord you want to switch into and the I chord

Ex.
C G Am F (key change into Gmaj) D G
C G Am F (key change into melodic Am... FYI not natural Am) E Am


For more creative usage of key changes, incorporate multiple key changes in between. Whatever chords you pick, make sure you keep resolving either one of these combinations of notes in the new key while maintaining harmonic integrity in the old key.
1) VII into the VIII(I)
2) IV into the III
3) II into the I

Realistically, any key change can work, but unless you want to keep the listener from feeling a sense of resolution in the key change (like what Chopin likes to do)

Last edited by J.L. on Mar-08-2011 at 17:56

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywjx...&feature=fvwrel

This track has some pretty basic but trance friendly modulations. listen to 70's - 2000 pop for clever subtle key modulations. The trick is to not approach it with the level of prepared harmony you would in classical music ie never use the V in root position. The trick is really just enharmonic re interpretation. For example a major chord can be at any given time (just a few) I IV V in major and III VI VII and V ( raised 3) in minor.

start of simple and experiment. Each chord tends to have at least 4 different ways to resolve so there are alot of options.

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Last edited by Looney4Clooney on Mar-08-2011 at 18:12

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Cool track but. It never changes key tho

here are some very simple but effective key changes in tunes

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Last edited by Looney4Clooney on Mar-09-2011 at 13:59

One thing I've noticed with many trance/techno producers (not referring to anyone on this thread) is that they sometimes seem to have a hard time differentiating between chord changes, passages that employ secondary dominants or "borrowed" chords, and actual key changes. I think that part of it may just be a misunderstanding of the terminology (i.e., key change vs. chord change), but I also wonder if some of it is attributed to the ubiquity of one-chord tracks in these genres. In other words, so many tracks now days seem to feature so little harmonic variation that it could sound foreign and, therefore, misinterpreted as a key change, when a new chord(s) is introduced. Just a thought.

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possible lol

I don't get why people flail around considering how much harder operating a daw or synth is. Music theory is really not that difficult. I mean if you can do intro calculus which is a requisite for doing just high school, why do people have such trouble with 7 letters.

the term key is pretty self explanatory. It really has a literal meaning.

I think people have really awful attention spans and reading is something most people just don't consider.

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Last edited by Looney4Clooney on Mar-09-2011 at 16:45

What's that at 4.27 then? Not a key change? Its not the most obvious one I've ever heard, I almost wasn't going to post it, but I thought it sounded like it might be a key change...

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track never leaves e minor. The E major chord is probably what thru you off but again that is just borrowed from E major and it is quickly changed back to e minor the next chord. Same type of thing as in Deadmaus some chords

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there are hundreds of track that do this type of thing. have the main part in a different key. then go back at the outro.

INtro and outro in F
Everything else in C minor.

also, check out chopin for very slick modulation ideas. He is probably the key that pioneered the less intrusive ways to modulate to foreign key regions. Check out his nocturnes for ideas. Here is one I typically give to beginners to figure out.



it is also important to see the big picture in that many passages just explore a key region for a bit but you wouldn't really say there is a key change unless you are really spending some time there and you usually have a perfect cadence ie V I in root position. If you do computer programming, think of it more as nesting.

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old stuff from days gone by (2001-2004)
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Last edited by Looney4Clooney on Mar-09-2011 at 17:11

i've a real problem with keys because they're nammed differently here so to me Cm or Am sounds really abstract, i had to draw a small piano with the correlations because that was driving my crazy , hence i feel represented in what Cryophonik says