How Well Do You Know Your Keys?, major keys, minor keys.. Options

[Ivan Milenkovic]

For those who have been in the video chat, they probably know how important is knowing the keys and knowing all 7 triads per key, in order to be able to improvise properly. Of course, it is not crucial that you learn this material, but it can help a lot in having it printed out on a piece of paper for reference. It can help you distinguish on what scales to use where, and also help with composing.

When you learn the table by heart, it's a giant leap/shortcut towards improvising, so decision is up to you if you want to use it!

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Here's how it works (you will find the Excel table bellow the text):

This is basically the table with all the diatonic keys. There are 14 of them, because of the way the circle of fifths and fourths work (some of them have the same notes) You don't need to be bothered by this, so let's check out how this table works:

In the middle column (column "J" ) you have the key of C major. It starts from above with the note C and goes down like this:

C
D
E
F
G
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
A

Now pay attention at the color that C note has. It is orange. The C in the row 10 is orange as well. This is the C major SCALE and KEY

The notes bellow the row 10 are going to A which is the last note in the C major column. It is in row 15 and marked with dark blue color. I have done this cause I wanted to have full relative minor scale of every key as well, and because of the intervals which I will explain now.

Now pay attention to the Column "A". There you have the degrees of the scale written down. You have I - VIII from orange row 3 to orange row 10. These numbers tell you what degree are the notes in rows of the major scales to the right.

Now check out the Column "B". There you can see the intervals that notes represent. You will notice that there are interval numbers from 1-13. I've gone beyond the major scale root, so you can easily pick the notes for extended chords.

The next column "C" tells you what mode every note builds within a key to the right. This is where to colors come in handy. I've made this layout:

ORANGE
LIGHT BLUE
LIGHT BLUE
YELLOW
YELLOW
DARK BLUE
GREEN
ORANGE
( and repeating again )

Because the table contains too many notes, sometimes it is difficult to find the right note. So this should help. "Warm" colors build major chords, and "cold" colors build minor chords. Green is exception and it is building diminished chord (Locrian mode).

ORANGE is the root of the key
LIGHT BLUE is 2 note of the key, builds dorian mode, has minor chord
LIGHT BLUE is 3 note of the key, builds phrygian mode, has minor chord
YELLOW is 4 note of the key, builds Lydian mode, has major chord
YELLOW is 5 note of the key, builds Mixolydian mode, has major chord
DARK BLUE is 6 note of the key, builds Aeolian mode, natural minor scale, builds minor chord
GREEN is 7 note of the key, builds Locrian mode, and diminished chord.

This table can tell you quick and easy what notes are within any key you want, and you can stack notes to build chords as well. I suggest printing the sheet in color and putting it on the wall. After some time the colors will enable you to find the right note immediately, and after some more time you will learn them by heart. Since this is practically the whole diatonic scale theory the system is pretty effective.

TABLE OF KEYS

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[playaxeman]

Great way of starting to learn them by hard

thx

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