Song Writing Solutions – Modulation, Relative Keys and Chord Substitutions

Here are some ideas to get your music out of a one key or chord progression rut when song writing. A great way to make your song or track more interesting is to change or modulate the key for a bridge / middle eight / break down section. Follow these few simple rules to learn what chords work together.

Relative Major & Minor
One common way to modulate (change) to a different key or tonal centre is to move the song to its relative minor or major. For example if you have a song in the key of C Major, A Minor is the relative Minor due to both chords sharing the C and E notes.

C Major & A Minor | Download Listen to the audio of C & Am.

If the song is in D Minor the relative major is F Major again because both chords share two notes. In this case F and A.

F Major & D Minor | Download Listen to the audio of F & Dm.

The rules to follow here are to go from a Major Key to its relative Minor Key go down 3 notes or 3 frets on the guitar (e.g. C to A) and to go from a Minor Key to a Major Key go up 3 notes or frets (e.g. D to F). Simple!

The Circle of 5ths
The Circle of 5ths is a diagram showing all 12 keys in music. Each key is 5 notes away in a scale as you go clockwise around the circle which is where the title Circle Of Fifths comes from. The 5th chord in a key usually wants to resolve (move) to the 1st chord. This is even more obvious if the 5th chord is made a dominant 7. For example G7 resolves to C and D7 resolves to G and so on round the circle.

This diagram is also handy as it shows the relative minor keys in the centre of the circle.

Once you’ve modulated the key to its relative minor (e.g. A minor from C major) you can emphasise that it’s in Am by adding some E7 chords to resolve to the A minor chords.

C Major & A Minor Song | Download Listen to the audio of C & Am Song.

The reverse of this would be modulating from A minor to C major then emphasising the key change by adding some G7 chords to resolve to C major.

A Minor & C Major Song | Download Listen to the audio of Am & C Song.

Chord Substitution
Apart from using this technique of relative major/minor to modulate a song or track to new key you can also use this as a simple form of Chord Substitution. This is a technique often used in jazz music where one chord is replaced with another. For example if you had a chord progression that was Dm F G Am you could use the rules of Relative Minors and Majors to change the chords to F Dm Em C.

4 Chord Major/Minor Song | Download Listen to the audio of the 4 Chord Major/Minor Song.

You can hear examples of this chord substitution going on above. Try this idea as a solution to your 3 or 4 chord song writing rut.