Related Keys?

[shingo]

Hi,
     Wondering if anyone could help me out and check whether I have this correct or not.

To find the 5 most related keys to the one you are in you take the Tonic the Sub-dominant and the Dominant and their minor keys (a third down) giving you 6 key notes on which 6 Triads are built yielding the names of the 5 relating keys (by omitting that of the tonic triad, the key you are already in)?

Also, as these keys are the primary ones accessible, to reach more distant ones would you have to use enharmonic modulation, or is that mererly one route in order to get there / can it be done in all situations?

Someone was talking with me about it and I wanted to check some things as I am only at very basic stages with theory, so this conversation has lead me to look into things ahead of where I am right now, so sorry if my descriptions are not very clear, I will do my best to clarify if needs be.

Thanks.

[bananafish]

From my understanding of the relation between keys, the most important thing is to know your circle of fifth chart well. That will make life so much easier.

That said, let's try to work out an example right now!

Take G major for instance. G major has one sharp (f#), now if you remember your key signatures well (or if you have a circle of fifth chart handy), the keys right next to G are C and D. Note that C has no sharps or flats, and D has two sharps- Now you've found two out of five of your five most closely related keys!

But how, you ask? Well, G has one sharp, correct? Now take that sharp and "minus" one - which becomes no sharps (and no flats), which is also C major - which is ALSO one of G major's immediate neighbors on the circle of fifth. And how did we get D? Well, ADD one more sharp to G (instead of minus one), which gives you two sharps. What major key signature has two sharps? D! And as you already know, D is the other immediate neighbor of G.

To find the remaining three keys, we have to turn to the minors. There are a couple different ways to do this, but the easiest for me is to simply take the relative minors of the major ones we've already found. So G's relative minor is E minor. C is A minor, and D is B minor. There you go! The three most closely related minor keys (in relation to G major and e minor, of course.)

The other ways are 1) simply lood at your circle of fifth chart and find all it's immediate neighbors. Or 2) First, find G's relative minor, and then add one sharp to it (to get B minor). Now you minus one sharp (from e minor) to get A minor.

Finally, we've found all five of G major's most closely related keys! G major: C major + D major + E minor + A minor + B minor!

Now you can go work on all the other keys!

[shingo]

Ah right I see, thank you. I think the result I obtained in my original method was the same so at least it is clarified as working, even though I may not have explained it particularly clearly.

[ramseytheii]

This is all right, but seems convoluted!  Related keys are built on triads of the tonic scale.  The reason there are 5, and not 6, is that the triad built on the seventh degree of the scale is not a complete harmony.  The rest of the scale notes, provide the most closely related keys (using the key signature of the tonic).

So for instance in F-sharp major, the closest keys are g-sharp minor, a-sharp minor, B major, C-sharp major, and d-sharp minor.  It's just the scale, minus the seventh degree.

Any of those chords built on the scale can be the entry way to more distant keys.  For instance, the B major from above can easily be used to introduce E major, a key which is distant from F-sharp major.  Schoenberg especially loved to classify chords according to how they appeared in other scales.

Walter Ramsey

[lizasan]

woww..
as i know..
the related keys are just the I, ii, IV, V, and vi chords
which will b connected each other..
but i've just known that it based on really complicated theory..
put and less the sharps..
then do it again for the other chords..
it's really confusing..
hahaa..