 Hi guys, this is Jason here from the Nathaniel School of Music in this lesson Let's learn all about the Roman numeral chord system a system used for a long long while to name chords In a chord progression for pretty much any chord all the way from simple triads to all your fancy jazz extensions Right. So first of all, why do we need Roman numerals in the first place? Why can't we just go and write f a minor b-flat major and C, you know Why can't we just write something like this, you know f a minor b-flat and C So this tells you what chords to play But then you may find that you will have another system which shows off something like this One small Roman 3 big Roman 4 and big Roman 5 So a system like this can be very helpful when you're trying to transpose music on pretty much any scale Sort of on the fly especially when you're in recording studios or when you're at concerts or your singer Just needs to change the scale very different from the original key of the song So it's very important to know that there are 12 scales in music Right, and if you're playing a song or if you've rehearsed a song on one of those 12 Doesn't mean that you're going to play on that one. You may have to change it depending on your song depending on the singer Depending on various factors in your music or maybe you just want to do a scale change at the end of the track Right. So Roman numerals can be very Interesting and very easy to even understand the purpose of the chords and the function of the chords in the music Right. So before we get started with Roman numerals I just wanted to give you a quick overview of the major scale and all its intervals and then the other Intervals as well, which are not part of the major scale Then we will use that information to move forward with Roman numerals, right? So first off if I take a major scale like let's say C major Everyone's favorite. I guess CD E F G a b Okay, and then the high C the first thing you'll notice These are all your major intervals. You have the root major second major third perfect fourth perfect fifth major sixth Major seventh and of course the octave Now in addition to this you also have notes which are not part of this the C major scale or the major scale in general You have a D flat What do we call that now we call that the minor second? Okay, then we have E flat which is between D and E What do we call that we call that as the minor third Which is part of a lot of the minor scales like the melodic minor the harmonic minor or the natural minor and so on right between E and F there is no Note because that's what we do in a major scale We have one step between the third and the fourth and then between the F and the G You have a very interesting note called the Tritone or the F sharp or G flat with respect to C What do we call that again the tritone or the diminished fifth or the augmented fourth? There are many names for it between G and a we have something called as a flat Okay, and what do we name that? Minor sixth okay between the fifth and the sixth and then between a and B We have the B flat. What do we call that the minor seventh and lastly between B and C? Well, there's nothing really because it's one step, right? So just note that the Roman numeral system is going to be used to symbolize the chords within the scale It's not there to symbolize notes. It's for chords. Okay, so with this backing knowledge We'll first build Roman numerals from the major scale and then just try and go a little beyond So in the major scale, let's just look at the chords of a simple major scale first like C major We say C major, which is the one major D minor E minor F major G major A minor and the seventh chord is called as B diminished So now let's try and apply Roman numerals to these particular chords The C chord is the one chord of the C major scale So because it is the one degree or the one function, we give it Roman one and it is a big Roman one Why big Roman because it's a major chord. So whenever you're writing major chords You use a big Roman one coming to the two the two is minor D minor So we write two minor and what is the Roman for minor small Roman two? The three is also minor as we know in chord theory. We write it using small Roman three the four is major Big Roman four the five is also major big Roman five the six is minor Small Roman six the seven is diminished. So for a diminished chord We do small seven and a degree sign like a 30 degree angle kind of a thing, right? And if you have to build further extensions of this harmony, it's not too big a deal You can do something like one Major seventh or you could even do something like one triangle triangle also gives you a major seventh Symbol you can do two minus seventh or you can even do two Minus seven like that on the top similarly three minus seventh Okay of four major seventh five dominant seventh Six minus seventh and then you also you have this seven half diminished chord Which we either write using five or you can even write it using seven Minus seven flat five, right? So essentially the Roman number stays its ground while all your chord extensions or bigger chords like nines or if you're writing something like a five seven flat nine Something like this. Why not? I mean that's fine. But as long as it's the five function, okay? Let's recap Major scale seven chords big one big four big five. Why major chords big Roman one big Roman four big Roman five Minor chords small two small three small six Okay, because it's minor so small Roman then you have your diminished chord, which is seven, right? So let's move on now if you're within the key of the major scale Roman numbers are sorted However, what if you want to bring in a chord, which is not part of the major scale just like that to kind of make it Exciting I guess maybe a few secondary dominant chords or just a few other borrowed chords from other scales Perhaps you just want other chords, you know, so let's say you have a chord progression Which I'm using Roman numerals for at the moment. I Have the one then maybe I have the Three and normally you'll have a small Roman three for minor in this case I'm having a big Roman three, right and then I have a big four and Then I want to end with a small four. So what does a small four mean for minor? So the two chords which are actually not part of the major realm are the three major and The four minor at the end the four minor giving you a nice minor plagal cadence, right? So if I have to play this on the key of something, let's say C major the chords are going to be C Which is Roman one major? It's going to be E major, which is the third. That's how you count it three is the major third and then you'll have your F major Which is Roman four and then you'll have your F minor which is for minor, right? And it's important to know that E major and F minor are not part of the C major domain. So it sounds like this E major Three big three major normal for Four minor back to Tonic, okay, right So all of these intervals which we use for the current chord progression are still major scale intervals We use the root the major third but a different chord which is non diatonic to the major scale from the major third then we took the perfect fourth major which is diatonic to the major scale and Perfect for minor which is non diatonic. However, you could also do something like this. You can do Roman one However, you can also do something like this you can take the Roman one Maybe you can do a Roman five Which is diatonic and then maybe you could do something interesting you could do a Six flat major Let me explain that shortly. Then you do a seven flat major and Then you loop that and see how that works So if I have to spell this out for the C major domain, it would be C major G major a flat major and B flat major now, how do we count that six flat major sixth is what again a Minus six with respect to C a minus one, which is a flat Okay, let's see how that works now. So C major G major a flat major awesome chord B flat major and Maybe back to see This is a great way to kind of denote chords which have the same interval from the major scale But then you're changing major to minor or it's a great way to even choose chords Which don't even have the same interval from the major scale, right guys So we've so far looked at Roman numerals first of all from the point of view of the major scale And then we've sort of looked at borrowed chords where you're taking the same function But changing the chord from major to minor or minor to major and then we do non-major scale interval chords like six flat major or you know Three flat major or some something like that. So let's now look at forming Roman numerals for a scale Which is not major maybe the next most popular one, which is possibly the harmonic minor. So let's try and write down a scale C harmonic minor if you will C D E flat F G a flat B And then the high C and it's important to observe that your three is flattened Your six is flattened and your seven is natural that means your seven stems from the major scale itself, right? So we've written down the C harmonic minor scale Let's now build the Roman numeral versions of all the chords of pretty much any harmonic minor scale So you'll have the one minor or C minor in this instance You'll have the two diminished or D diminished in this instance The three is a little bit interesting. It forms what's called as an augmented chord So what I'm going to first write here is three flat Because why three flat again three flat kind of tells us that it is not part of C major scale It is a flattened third the C flat and then E flat builds an augmented chord So it's always Roman numeral with the flat or sharp depending on whether it's major or minor and then you put the Symbol of the chord which for major will be capital Roman minor will be small Roman Diminished will have that degree and now we've learned with an augmented chord. It has that plus sign Moving on the four is your four minor F minor the five is actually a major which is G major Now the six is interesting because it's a six flat with respect to the major scale How does harmonic minor differ from major again the three is the flat and the six is flattened So I'm going to now write six flat major because the six Note forms a six major chord six flat major chord and finally the seventh note or the natural seventh Forms a diminished chord. So this is how we're writing it Just make a note that this is subject to Interpretation or subject to different Roman numeral Convention some people could just write a capital three augmented or a capital six augmented if you're referencing the harmonic minor But I just choose to reference the major scale the Roman numeral system is also subject to your usage Because it's ultimately for you. It's a personal thing. It's for you to change the scale or to understand the song better for your Perspective so I am right now calling it three flat with reference to the major scale Which is considered very very common, so right guys So we've seen quite a few ways to learn Roman numerals, right? We first off build Roman numerals within the major scale, haven't we we've used one major two minor three minor four major five major six minor Seven diminished then we looked at building chord progressions. You can do a chord progression like one five six Four you see how I wrote the six using small numbers small Romans and then you can also Do changes like instead of four natural you can do four minor here Right, even though the four minor did not come from the major scale You can use it and you just have to know it's not part of the normal major scale It is a chord built from the four of the major scale But it is not major it is minor and then we also looked at how you can build Roman numerals to create much bigger chords For example C seventh flat nine or something could also be written as maybe five Seven flat nine some such thing depending on the number or depending on the degree from the scale and Last but not least we looked at forming Roman numerals with other scales today We took the harmonic minor scale, but you could do it for other scales as well, right guys So hope you found this lesson useful for Roman numeral writing It's a great technique to kind of generalize your chord progression for any song Which you're which you've composed or which you're going to be playing and it's a good way to collaborate with people as well Which demand you to change chords on the fly and just quickly kind of play things So generalize the chords using Roman numbers and then move it to any one of the 12 scales That's pretty much the the gist of today's lesson again This is Jason here from the Nathaniel School of Music I'd encourage you to subscribe to our YouTube channel if you haven't already Share the video with all your musician friends like it Comment let us know if you'd like us to teach you something else and as always keep rocking and cheers