[MUSIC] In the last lecture, I gave you lots of information about minor scales and keys. It may have been a bit overwhelming. In this lecture, I'd like to practice writing minor scales. This will be a short lecture to give you a chance to digest what you've learned. Recall that we said, that a major scale has a parallel minor scale that has the same starting note and the same scale degrees two, four and five, but lowered three, six and seven. G majors parallel minor. G minor shares the notes G, A, C and D. But uses B flat, E flat and F natural as scale degrees three, six and seven. A major scale also has a relative minor scale in which all the pitches are the same but use a different starting note. Here are the diatonic notes for the key signature of one sharp. The relative minor to G major is E minor. In other words, E minor and G major have the same key signature, which means that E minor uses the same pitches as G major, G, A, B, C, D, E and F#. But instead of G being the tonic, that is the first note of the scale, the most important pitch in the key. Now E is the tonic. So the notes are E, F#, G, A, B, C, D, and E. The most common way of teaching students to figure out relative minor is to say that the tonic of the relative minor is three half steps below the tonic of the major. I always add that you must change two letter names. This method assumes that you know where the half steps are on a piano. You need to know that there is no black key between B and C or between E and F. So three half steps down from G includes F to E. There is no black key called F flat. Using G major, when we go down three half steps F#, F-natural we end up at E. Later we'll call this a minor third. So E-minor is the relative minor to G-major they use the notes starting in a different place. They have the same key signature. Let's do another one. The relative minor of E flat major is, counting down three half steps, D, D flat, C minor. We must be careful in figuring out the tonic when using this half step method. For example, the relative minor of A major is, going down half steps, A flat, G. But what do we call this last note? G flat? F#? If we remember that we must go down two letters, we'll be fine. So, A to A flat, A flat to G, and G to F# takes us to the correct minor key, three half-steps and two letter names down from A. So the relative minor of A major is F# minor. Let's try F# major. F# major's relative minor is one half step is F natural. Another half step is E natural. And the final half step is E flat or D#. Which one? Two letters down, gives us D# minor. Now you do it. What is the relative minor of B flat major? Down three half steps is A, A flat and G, so G minor. What's the relative minor of E major? Remember that E major is a sharp key. All flat keys are something flat as their tonic other than F major that is. So E down to E flat, down to D down to C#. We can't call it D flat, since we must change letter names twice, also E major is a sharp key so the relative minor must also be a sharp key. Let's go the other direction. What's the relative major of D minor? You will have to count up three half steps and we'll still have to change letter names twice. So D up to D#. Up to E and then of the F is three half steps. So F major is the relative major of D minor. What is the relative major of A# minor? Going up three half steps, A sharp to B, B to C, C to C#, not D flats since that's too many letter names. And since it must be sharps and not flats. Let's have another look at the circle of fifths which shows all the major keys and a kind of clock face. Since there are 12 notes in an octave there are 12 different starting notes for scales. Three of them at the bottom have two possible spellings. We now can add all the relative minor keys to the circle which have the same key signature as their major keys. It gets really crowded at the bottom when we do this. I suggest you spend a little time with this diagram. For example, convince yourself that the relative minor of C flat major is A flat minor. C flat major and A flat minor have the same sound as B major and G# minor, respectively. Not much new this time, we've just been practicing figuring out relative minor from major, down three half steps and two letter names. And relative major from minor, up three half steps and two letter names. We also completed the circle of fifths diagram to include relative minor keys. We have one final lecture dealing with minor keys. We'll see that minor is a bit more complicated than major, since several scale degrees are commonly altered, giving us three different forms of minor. [MUSIC]
