 Hi guys, this is Jason Zak from Nathaniel's School of Music. In this lesson, we are going to study the concept of passing chords and basically how you can add some harmonic flavor to a chord progression which I wouldn't want to use the word boring but I would use it as very stationary and very maybe redundant. It's the same chord repeating and rhythmically you can do a lot, melodically you can do a lot between the two chords. You can add passing bass notes, you can do things like, melodically you can do, definitely makes the journey better, rhythmically you can add arpeggios, you can add a bunch of different beat division systems or time fields as we call them, however this lesson is going to focus on harmony, even though you already have the existing harmony, namely the two chords. The two chords for today's study would be B flat major, B flat, B flat, D F and D major. You could learn them with their different inversions if you wish, B flat major would be B flat D F, D F B flat, F B flat D and then D major would be D F sharp A F sharp A D, A D F sharp. So that's root position, first inversion, second inversion. So these are going to be the chords for the lesson. Now the challenge here, if you play B flat for too long, let's say an entire bar, one, two, three, four and then go to D. It works for the song, maybe the chord charts have been printed that way, but let's look at a few techniques, let's look at a few concepts as well. A lot of music theory concepts are there to make this journey a lot more interesting and let's isolate the journey to be harmonically interesting in nature. Let's not focus on rhythm, we are just going to play the chords as blocks, just like this, two, three. So there are a few harmonic concepts which I'll be very excited to share with you in this lesson. So do stay tuned till the very end, there are going to be quite a few concepts which are very simple to learn. You just need a pen, paper and a piano and play along with me. Before we get started, it will be awesome if you could consider getting yourselves a copy of my handwritten notes which will be available on our Patreon page. We also have staff notation for a lot of our YouTube videos and a MIDI file for download, you can import that into a MIDI player. Also if you'd like similar lessons or different lessons on a variety of subjects from rhythm to arpeggios to your learning your favorite songs and also other topics like music production, ear training, theory and composing, do stay tuned to our channel by hitting that subscribe button and possibly even turning on the bell icon which will give you notifications when a new video hits you. So let's get cracking. As I told you, B flat major and D major are our chords. The first kind of flavor or passing chords which I would like to add would be you take both these chords, B flat and D and you ask yourself, these are major chords. So what would be the relative minor of these two major keys or key signatures? B flat major, well, you don't need to know the notes. You can just say B flat major scales relative minor happens to be what? To get the relative minor, a simple trick would be go up a major sixth. So B flat, C, D, E flat, F, G, G would be the relative minor or you can go down a third or down a minor third. B flat, A, G, B flat, A, G, B flat, A, G. If you know the circle of fifths, you can go three o'clock from anywhere clockwise in the circle. So if you take B flat, B flat, one o'clock is F, two o'clock is C, three o'clock is G. F, C, G, three o'clock will give you the relative minor. It also helps to internalize these concepts because if you have to use them real time in a real world scenario, it's important to know this just at the back of your head. So we've got the relative minor of B flat, which is G minor. What about the relative minor of D? Similar story, D, E, F sharp, G, A, B. Or you can do D, C sharp, B, down a third, circle of fifths, D. And how do we go clockwise, right? D, A, E, B. Okay. So what you're going to do now is play the B flat. Remember, it's for four counts. So the lesson, at least for getting by in this lesson, we'll just half the duration of each chord for now. So B flat will last for two counts, or two beats. B flat, and then it's relative minor, G minor, and then D major. It's relative minor, B minor. Repeat back to B flat. Okay. Let's do that. And then B. You also get a very unique chord progression because you're not... First of all, B flat major and D major are not part of the usual major scale diatonic system of chords. And even if they were, you may realize that the relative minors may not be diatonic to the scale or the key in which you're working on. So it can create some interesting music and also promote your melody to be very harmonic in nature. What I mean by that is your melody tends to now survive only by singing chord tones rather than the usual scale patterns or too many repetitive notes or too many similar patterns or motifs. So you'll end up forcing yourself to sing a melody on the chord tones and you get a very progressive sound used a lot with progressive genres. So if you take, I'm singing a melody with the chord tones of B flat. But I need to shift to G minor faster. So remember, I have one bar per chord. And I can linger that F sharp because F sharp is also there in the B minor chord. So kind of a melody very rarely do you get the opportunity to do melodic movements like on its own. Sounds quite annoying if you ask me, but with the chords, maybe also thinking, can I jumble up the chords? Do I have to? My proposed chord progression was B flat major, D major. Can I start from G, the relative minor, then go to the relative major and see what happens there. So G minor, B flat major, B minor, D major. That also sounds pretty interesting and you can jumble things up. So maybe you can go minor to relative major and then major to relative minor. So minor. So I like the two minors going together. So maybe you could start with G minor minor to its major. That gives you a more braver sound. And it has that common bond which is D. So basically what you need to know is there are 12 keys in music and all of those 12 keys will have a link between the major and the relative minor or if you would like to visualize it from the perspective of the minor, then you will be minor going to the relative major. So the formula again to go from any major key to a minor, you go up a major sixth or you need to know a major sixth from B flat which is G. So B flat major's relative minor is G minor. You need to know this. It's a very important thing to memorize along with things like the circle of fifths. There are few things I think you really need to know when it comes to theory. The circle of fifths, clockwise, counterclockwise, very important. Knowing your thirds, major third and minor third and on all 12 keys, very important. And major and relative minor or vice versa, minor to relative major. These are some very important things or concepts you need to internalize. So B flat to its relative minor and then D to its relative minor, B minor. So like I said, you can jumble the chords and maybe if you'd like, you can use these relative minor passing chords as an inner passing function. Maybe at the very end of the bar, you can sneak in the relative minor. So B flat major, G, D major, B minor, B flat. Maybe you don't want to mess with the original chord progression too much. You want to just add this flavor to get you to the next chord. B flat. So that's three beats of B flat, one beat of G minor and then three beats of D, one beat of B minor. So maybe you can play that as a triplet. And if you add some rhythm to the party, you can elongate these chords. You can play the B flat for an extra bar and rhythm will make it even more interesting. Okay. Also, you can experiment maybe playing B flat for the same full bar, but then adding a second bar and then playing the G minor, you know, so it'll make a nice chord progression. So you have to experiment. It's just a way to add passing chords or even if you don't want to call this subject as passing chords, it's just a way to add chords to an existing chord progression without going too much off the radar and also trying to get a very interesting and beautiful sound as you go along the journey. This is not at all academic. These are, you could say the basics of music and even classical music has these concepts. This has these concepts, country, gospel, almost all genres follow these same concepts. So let's move on to the next harmonic approach to make the journey from B flat major to D major a lot more interesting. For this, I'm going to use what we call as the Plagal Cadence. The Plagal Cadence would be a four of anything. It's a four going to one or it's a four with respect to the one. You can look at it that way. So what are my two chords again? B flat major and D major. So how do I get the four of B flat and how do I get the four of D? A great strategy would be the circle of fifths. If you write the circle, C, G, D, A, E, B, F sharp, D flat, A flat, E flat, B flat, F C. You need to count it in that way. You should also count it in the other way, C F B flat, E flat, A flat, D flat, G flat, B E, A, D, G, C. Now if you move clockwise, you're going to get perfect fifths. That example C to G or in B flat's case, B flat to F, clockwise is like this. If you didn't know already, that's how a clock works. B flat to F will be a perfect cadence or an authentic cadence or going to its fifth kind of movement. If you go in the counterclockwise direction, you're going to get perfect fourths. Example if you see B flat, you're going counter the clock, you'll get E flat there. Let's look at it from C's perspective. C, anti-clock by one, you're going to get F, C, clock one, you're going to get G. So if you go anti-clock, that's F, that would give you the fourth, the perfect fourth. And that's the chord I want to utilize in the plagal movement and in the other direction which we are going to see in the next part, we are going to go to its perfect fifth. That's giving us the authentic cadence. We've done a very detailed lecture on the study of musical cadences, a very important concept while composing chords. So do check that out in the description, we'll leave you a video. So if I want to find the fourth of B flat, circle of fifths, counter neighbor which is E flat, that's your E flat going to B flat. That's the plagal cadence, we also call it the armen cadence in gospel music, plagal cadence and then we've identified that. So E flat is the fourth or the plagal with respect to B flat. So if you go D, what is D's plagal, G, right? Because I'm going to G, I'm approaching, D was always there and then G is its fourth. So you're adding the fourth chord and toggling that or using that with its tonic. So you're going to end up with B flat, E flat, E G, B flat, E flat, major, D, G minor and the beauty here is those plagal chords, passing plagal chords as I'm calling them, you can make them major or minor. Let's check out all this stuff with minor but the B flat will be major, D will be major. Other stuff, so instead of it being E flat major, it's going to be E flat minor and similarly G which is the fourth from D will be G minor. So B flat, E flat minor, D major and G minor, still works, major and minor. And what's also nice about the plagal which I like is you don't have to change your bass, you can keep the bass as E flat, it actually sounds like a passing chord. Keep that B flat ringing and then D, it's still a kind of a D major chord, the whole band is playing G major but what you could do, you can promote this very mixolydian flat 6 kind of sound which is a mixolydian with a flat 6 and a flat 7 because mixolydian is flat 7, right? So D major, G minor with a D and then D major or you can do it as proper chords. B flat, E flat with an E flat bass D and then a G bass, B flat, you could maybe walk up to E flat and then go down, the bass walking up and walking down really helps to promote those chords and make them accessible for a listener's ear. And like I said with plagal you can do either the triad as major or minor. For example B flat, it could be an E flat minor as well, E flat, I like the minor ending. So my personal preference with this movement would be, see originally you had B flat and D so to make that interesting I'm going B flat, E flat major, D and then G minor which is still, G is still D's fourth, perfect fourth and B flat's fourth is E flat. So that's the plagal passing and using a very similar concept we can do the authentic passing as I'm calling it. The authentic cadence will be the circle of fifths where you're finding the fifth with respect to the one. So the authentic movement is actually counterclockwise to the circle because it's fifth. Fifth is F, right? So you're moving clockwise to find the F and then you move from either, usually you do five to one but in this case I'm just getting the five chord. So B flat's five is F major or F minor. Like I said the cadences you can play them, it's just the intervillic relationship which should be a fourth or a fifth, a perfect fourth or a perfect fifth. B flat to its F which is F major, that's a five from B flat, right? So that's the perfect cadence or the authentic cadence. B flat, F then D, A, D's fifth is A. Let's try out some minors. It's also to maybe flip that around. You can do B flat to the F and I don't like the D to A minor. Like major, minor, minor, major, I like that combo. So B flat, authentically going to F minor, A which is the five of the D major and then that links up. It's almost like those minor chords are sandwiched between the original chords which are B flat major and D major. Originally we did, it's become quite boring to come to think of it just playing B flat and D for so long. So B flat with the pass then A minor which takes itself to D. What I also like about these authentic chords or the plagal passing chords if ever at that time you want to add some riffy or a rhythmic variation instead of doing 3, 4, there is or the challenge there is you're repeating the D, you're hitting D too much which may sound boring or annoying. So you have that variation created with the cadence B flat, F minor. You can even just make that two chord movement as its own phrase. So you have two different sounding duos of chords. Maybe a more relaxing arpeggio like D flat to F minor and then more chaos. So these new harmonic options give you, believe it or not, new rhythmic options because you're motivated to do more things rhythmically. Not to say that rhythmic options don't inspire harmony. I think they both work with each other. So you need to while you're harmonically exploring also be rhythmically exploring as well. So let's move forward. We've covered three styles of passing chords. The relative minor, the plagal, the authentic. We have a couple more. This one is really cool. The secondary dominant concept. So again coming back to our two chords of interest. B flat major and D major. Now the earlier strategies involved the B flat chord and then with respect to the same chord you form the relative minor which is the sixth degree, the plagal which is the fourth degree and the authentic which is the fifth degree. The secondary dominant concept is a chord which precedes. It has to precede the upcoming target chord. So when you play B flat, the next chord you play will not have much to do with B flat. It'll have everything to do with the next chord D. So before going to the D chord, D major chord, here's what you do. B flat. You can add an A seventh which goes to D and the concept of secondary dominance is you're adding a five of the eventual one. So if D is now considered your one, again the circle of fifths will help you. The clockwise neighbor is A. A will push to D. It wants to resolve and especially if you play that A as a seventh chord, as a dominant seventh chord it pulls even stronger. It's almost a magnet lock to D major. So B flat. Earlier B flat. D. Now what are we trying? In between the B flat. Again it gives you a lot of melodic possibilities. Okay and don't forget the journey now from D to B flat. B flat is going to D but D is also going to B flat to create the loop of chords, right? So B flat A D F B flat. So F is the fifth of B flat, isn't it? Circle of fifths, very important guys. So F B flat. Okay that's how I like to get it initially. Okay let's do that again. B flat A D F. Again very different than what we did earlier, right? Now even though I have planted B flat major and D major there's something beautiful about secondary chords that they can resolve to either major or their target minor. So I could have a B flat minor and that can resolve to D minor and that F7 can either resolve to the B flat major or resolve to the B flat minor. They both work. Similarly A7 can resolve to the D major or A7 can resolve to the D minor. There we go. So let's do that secondary dominant again. A which is the secondary of the D. And F is the five of the B flat. And A is the five of the D. And F is the five of the B flat. See I like that lick. Like I said the chords can really inspire the melody which you're trying to compose. So you can also use this as a composing tool and before we do the final point of this harmonic passing I'd also like to point out that the secondary dominant chord B flat A7 can also be replaced by a diminished chord. So B flat you can replace it by what we call as secondary diminished chords. And similarly you can also do a secondary diminished to the B flat. So it's a diminished seventh chord. We won't do that too much in this video. However I've done a video on diminished seventh chords exclusively and how you can use them to resolve. It's one of my favorite chords as well. So we'll link up a few videos in the description. Okay. Now the last harmonic flavor you can add between these two triads B flat for a rather long time and D major for a rather long time would be a common jazz concept which is a two five one cadence in between these chords. And the two fives would be with respect to the next chord not with respect to the current or the previous chord. So B flat major to D major. So now you ask yourself what is the two five of D major? The two and five are with respect to D as the root not with respect to the original tonic or the key center of the song which we don't know right now. It's probably B flat. It could also be D but leave that aside. So we are targeting D and to reach D we would need to find the two five of the D and let's see what that is. In the key of D the two would be the major second that's E and we play that as an E minor. The two will be played as a minor. Usually you can also play it as a dominant but I'm going minor for now just for flavor. And then the five of the D again A, I'm playing it as a seven. So E minor seventh perhaps A dominant seventh which is a four note chord and that results to D also the circle of fifths can help. You do E, A, D if you go counter clockwise you'll easily remember it. So I'm playing B flat and then before the D major comes I'm welcoming it better with E minor seventh A seventh D this can be alongside B flat major you can play maybe D major also as a major seventh B flat major Now you want to come back to B flat so you can do a two five of the target B flat because the two fives will target the next chord. So what will take us to D major smoothly again? E minor A, D what will take us back to B flat? B flat's two five which is C minor F, B flat one more time so B flat E, A, D let's just do that again B flat E, A, E, F, B flat I like the fact that it's minor, dominant and then the tonic but you can even do things like B flat E, A, D more assertive all dominants you know B flat E, A I prefer a major seventh on my target chords now B flat major seventh minor seventh dominant next one's major seventh major ninth you can add minor seventh dominant it's become almost an entirely different chord progression but it retains the grounding of the chords the original chord progression was B flat major to D so for all you know your melody could hold its ground or be influenced now by these new harmonic filler chords which need not even be called filler chords anymore they can be part of the overall chord progression right so just to revise we've done five strategies if you were to count it I think it's five wherein you have to add chords in between the B flat and the D which is your existing chord progression what did we do first we did relative minor passing which are the relative minors of each of your two chords B flat and D major then we did plagal passing which is the fourth going to one or adding the four to each current chord so B flat's four would be E flat D's four would be G minor then we have the authentic passing so that's a fifth B flat's fifth is F and D's fifth is A and that chord which is plagal fourth or authentic fifth could be minor or major as you please second re-dominance was G number four which will precede the target chord so it's dependent on the next chord so we did A seventh going to D F seventh going to B flat and we extended the concept by doing two five ones second re-dominance are five ones actually two five ones would be the more jazz cadence two five one two five one use a lot in these jazz standards a lot of familiar jazz songs actually will have that two five one cadence right guys hope you found the lesson useful the notes are waiting for you on our patreon page do consider getting yourselves a copy and support us there also it will be great if you can hit that subscribe and turn on the bell yes we want you to it will really help our channel but it will also help you if you are interested in more content from our channel it may sometimes get lost with the world of youtube so when you hit that notification you are going to get similar lessons related lessons new lessons on a variety of topics not just harmony as we saw now there are rhythm lessons there are arpeggio lessons there are some song study lessons other instruments music production composition and so on and so forth so stay tuned to our channel for many more thanks for watching the video thanks for your support and do leave us a comment with what you thought and if you have something you would like to learn please share that as well cheers and catch you in the next one