 Hello everyone and welcome to Blackstar Potential. My name is Lee Fuge and I'm here today with MusicTeacher.com and in this lesson we're going to take a look at how to write a chord progression in the minor key. So in the last video we talked about how you guys can start using the major scale to construct major key chord progressions in any key. So in this video we're going to do the same thing but with the minor scale. All of the tones you're hearing in this video are coming from the Blackstar Studio 10 6L6 which is mic'ed up with a Luit Audio LCT 440 condenser microphone. So in order for us to actually start writing minor key chord progressions first of all we need to work out how to play in the minor key. So last time like I said we learned the major scale which is this. And if you think back to that lesson we gave each one of those notes in the scale a number which we referred to as intervals. So we're going to use these intervals now to convert our major scale into our minor scale. So in that video I did reference the major scale being a bit of a gateway into theory and we can basically create other scales and other things in the theory world from that one scale. So that's what we're going to do right now. So to convert this to a minor scale otherwise known as the natural minor scale we have to first of all think of those intervals numbers 1 through 7 and what their corresponding notes are. So we've got A B C sharp D E F sharp G sharp and back to A. So those notes are going to be very important in us working out what our minor equivalents are. So first of all we're going to look at the minor scale. So to do this we need to change a few notes of this scale. So instead of 1 2 3 we actually need to be playing what's called a flat 3. This is the note in a chord that determines whether it's major or minor. So you get a major third and a minor third. So in the major scale we're playing a major third which is the C sharp note. But what we need to do to make this minor is we need to flatten this note. So to flatten the note we simply just take it down a semitone and instead of a C sharp it becomes a C. So my first few intervals are now 1 2 flat 3. Now to go from here back to the flat 3 here is a bit of a jump. So I'm going to rejig the scale shape a little bit and move this third fret note to the eighth fret here on the low E string. So I've got A B C. In the minor scale the 4 and 5 are exactly the same so that's still going to be D and E. So so far I've got 1 2 flat 3 for 5. Now in the major scale I had a 6 which is my F sharp and a 7 which is my G sharp. I need to flatten both of those notes now to F and G. So it's a flat 6 and a flat 7. So the F sharp becomes an F and the G sharp becomes a G. Now once again I can rejig this a little bit so instead of coming to the third fret on the D string for my F note I can put that here on the eighth fret of the A. My G note is fine here on the fifth of the D. So I've got A B C D E F and G. So those are my seven notes in the first octave of the natural minor scale A B C D E F and G 1 2 flat 3 4 5 flat 6 flat 7. So now we need to apply chord types to each of those intervals and that's going to give us the chords we can use to construct minor key chord progressions. So because we're playing in a minor key and we're starting from an A our first chord has to be minor so that's going to be an A minor. In the minor key the second note now which is a B this is going to be our minor 7 flat 5. The third chord in a minor key is always a major so that's going to be C major. The four and five chords are always going to be minor so that's going to be D minor and E minor and then our flat six and flat seven or our six and seventh chords are going to be F and G. So that's A minor B minor seven flat five C major D minor E minor F major G major. So you can see this rule is not too different to the way we worked it out in major we've just basically substituted a few notes there. So we've flattened the three flattened the six and flattened the seven so that gives us one two flat three four five flat six flat seven in doing so we've changed the C sharp to a C the F sharp to an F and the G sharp to a G. The other thing we've done is we've just jumbled up the order of the chords so we're starting on a minor chord so the formula for minor key chord progressions is one is the minor two is the minor seven flat five three is the major four and five are minor six and seven or flat six and flat seven are major chords so that is our formula to start writing minor key chord progressions now we just need to put it together so the great thing in minor key chord progressions is that everything we know from major chord progressions remains the same we can string any of those chords together and they will work so for instance I could go from an A minor to a D minor which is a one to a four that's always going to work because both of those chords are part of the same parent chord family which is a minor and I could take that one step further and I could add the five chord for instance or instead of going to the form five I could go to the sixth and seventh chords which is F and G or maybe you want to add that C major chord to the mix we could go A minor F major G major C major for a songwriter this is great because you can really still use your number based systems and this really helps when it comes to changing key so if you wanted to shift this to a different key just like last time simply shift the scale to the new position apply the chord types to the intervals and there's your chords for whatever key you're moving in if you come up with a progression in A that's a one four five or like I did there a one six seven you could just simply move that to a new key and use the first fourth and fifth or first six and seven notes of that key and there is your progression transposed to another position just like with a major key you're probably not going to lean too much on that minor seven flat five which in this case is a B minor seven flat five but in a minor key with it being the second interval of the scale it's a little more usable so you're probably not going to base an entire song around it but once again it's great to use as a passing chord on your way back to the root so there you go there is the natural minor scale in the key of A minor but with the theory to accompany that you can move this around to any position you want and now you are set up to write chord progressions in any key major or minor so if you haven't already checked out the major chord video please go check that out as well on the black star youtube channel and start creating chord progressions in whatever key you want anywhere on the guitar armed with a very simple bit of theory thank you guys so much for watching i hope you've enjoyed this lesson if you did please let us know down below in the comments what you thought how you got on and more importantly if there is anything else you'd like to see us talk about in future lessons please throw that below as well and don't forget to check out the black star amplification youtube channel for more lesson videos just like this if you're looking for a guitar teacher in your local area please check out musicteacher.com there's a network of fantastic teachers all around the country waiting to help you guys out thanks so much for watching and i'll see you soon