 everyone. This is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this lesson, we are going to study a very important topic in the field of songwriting, theory and composing music in general. It's the idea of working with parallel skills as well as relative skills. So whenever we are on a scale, be it major or minor or a mod or a raga or some other entity, we don't have to necessarily stick with that for life, you know or for life meaning the duration of the song. Within the journey of the song, which could be for about three and a half odd minutes, we can give our audience a set of different flavors which won't get them out of their comfort zone or won't confuse them. You're using something which is a very commonly heard and commonly used concept in the field of music. So in this lesson, I'm going to focus on this important distinction between relative skills and parallel skills very similar to the modal concept as well which we have in music and I've done a few lessons on modes on our YouTube channel which we'll put in the description. So check out that as well after this video or if you found the modes lesson which I already have done a bit daunting, this lesson may well be the start of that bigger topic of modes. So let's get cracking. Before we do, there are going to be a lot of my handwritten notes written for this lesson on our Patreon channel. Do consider getting yourselves a copy and on Patreon there are different tires for your membership. For $5, you get all my notes, backing tracks, MIDI files wherever applicable. However, you have other tires as well where you can interact with me in different settings in a live scenario, Q&A, solving your doubts in this particular field and so on and so forth. So head over to Patreon. It's an interesting platform which is getting better and better for us as a channel making content. Also, don't forget to hit that subscribe button and turn that bell icon for regular notifications. Let's get cracking. So if you take a scale, let's say C major, you'll realize that it has seven notes as most of our scales have in music. So C major will have C, D, E, F, G, A, B and then that C just gets repeated. Now, if you are to play music with this flavor or this vibe or the major vibe or the Ionian vibe as we call it, what's very important to note is the chords which go with this music and also the root or the perspective of the song. So if you take C or C major to get the flavor of these intervals, ultimately when I hear, hear stuff, we are not hearing singular notes like E or A or B and deciding an emotion for our brain. We are always hearing one note following the next note or you play one and then you play the next and then you have a bond or a vibe created between those entities. Let's say now you played E and then you have a C. Now this has a very strong vibe, a very specific mood and very distinctive if I compare it with maybe E and F. But on their own E, F, B or whatever, these are just objects, these are just notes and it's a collection of these notes when used together which form scales, which form chords and things of use or things of interest for a musician or even a listener. So I'm just going to stick to the key of C, C major and if we want to get that vibe, you need to have a strong root which is C. So if you want to call something C major, the root or the focal point, the point of interest, the home note will be C. So now you have a point of reference and from there everything is mapped. So if I play a D, it's with respect to C. If I play, it's with respect to C. F, it's with respect to C. G to C, perfect fifth. A to C, major sixth. B to C, major seventh and then you have the octave and you'll realize that each interval sounds a certain way. Some intervals sound consonant as we call it. Example of fifth, some intervals sound dissonant. Example a seventh. And you have intervals from within the scale and then you can even borrow or use intervals from outside the scale. So coming back to the job at hand, so C major is the scale of focus or interest. So now my goal is to get the true flavor of C major, so to speak. Now one way we did that just before what I'm saying now was to play a consistent C major root or you'll find in you know Eastern music or in Hindustani or Carnatic music, you'll have a Tanpura going a repeated root with a fifth or sometimes maybe a seventh just to give you the flavor of the scale or the rug. But in Western music or music with chords, you can't have the steady root. So you need to have the representing chords. So the way we look at our chords is we say some chords are stable or home chords like C major, then you have some chords which take you away from home. What we call as the predominant and the dominant chord and then you build an energy movement. You say at this point the energy is something then it becomes more higher energy or more unstable and then it resolves. So with C major to get the vibe you want to play all your available diatonic chords. So with C major you have C major, D minor, E minor, F major, G major, A minor, D diminished and that's it. So you have seven chords, each of those chords have a certain personality, a certain emotion. Your major chords sound generally happy. The minor chords generally sound serious or a bit moody and the diminished chord is a bit more tense or in a state of anxiety or you know like a bridge chord. You're not sure of where you are so to speak. Now the idea behind relative scales and parallel scales which is the topic of this video is how can we now be on C major and then go to another scale and come back to C major smoothly. So the next scale we play should have something in common with C major otherwise it's just going to be very random. It's going to be strange. It will almost feel like you're started to watch a new movie and it just confuses you. It just feels like you know you're watching a completely brand new movie where the plots are not even related to each other. So if you take C major first of all the relative concept would be you're trying to change the root to something else and by changing the root you retain the same pitches or you retain the same musical notes but you change the vibe because the intervals are changed between the new root let's say A but we will keep the same set of notes which C major had which is C D E F G A B so the A is going to now anchor the vibe or the mood of what you're going to give it. So you take C major you see it has a completely different personality. This is what we call as a relative scale. Relative meaning it has the same pitches as the parent scale but a different root. Because of the different root you're going to have completely different set of intervals because our ear is always hearing the vibe created between two entities. Our ear is not hearing a note. Yes it is hearing a note but our ear is feeling two notes. So you may hear one sound it's just one thing you just saw an object but for you to put that into context or into perspective you need multiple objects. So you will have a note E which sounds a certain way with respect to C you have a note E with respect to A which has a certain vibe with respect to A because the root is changed. So I hope that is clear with regards to the relative concept or the relative scale concept. The idea here is you take any scale to start off with let's say C major it has seven notes so any of those seven notes would form the relative scale from that parent scale. You could say parent scale is C major and the relative scales are well all the other modes or the other relative scales of C. So we can use these words the word mode and relative scales interchangeably but the most common relative scale in music is called as the relative minor. So the minor scale would be where you start or you build it from the sixth degree of the parent major scale. So what is the sixth degree of C 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 that's your A. So if you play a major scale whether point of reference or the root is it sixth you're going to form the relative minor or if you started on the relative minor let's say if your life began on A minor then the relative major of this minor would be C major that's a third apart so that you go up a 3 or you're going up a minor third or a flat third you get yourself the relative major and then from a major to the relative minor you go up a six or six scale steps or up a sixth degree to a major six to be more specific and you get yourself the relative minor. So a simple way to feel the major scale and the minor scale is to play it with a triad rather than only the single note you could play a C E G which is a major chord built using the root the third and the fifth degree the root the third and the fifth degree become very important notes to conclude that it is that it is in fact that scale. So gives you a very C major sound now if you want an A minor sound you play the root of A minor which is A then go up a third C then go up a fifth E and play you could even play C major scale ascending or descending or to make it more obvious you could play A minor which is C major starting with A or the relative scale and before I move on to the next concept I wanted to clarify that scales are not only felt by playing them in an ascending or a descending manner you can just play any note of the set of notes which is seven and develop different patterns and that's what makes a tune that's what makes a melody which we all remember no one's going to remember this melody or that melody it's rather boring it's just a scale going up and down right so you have a few stress notes a few focal point notes which purely which clearly distinguish it from the major counterpart so in the major scale you have the four coming down to the three that's a very common movement and you have the seven going to one so seven resolving to the tonic or the one that's also called as the leading tone so you'll have these melodic movements between notes which are very representative of major while with minor if you take A minor you stress on the sixth degree which is the same note you had for C major namely F but it feels a lot different with the A context that's more minor now the beauty of the B here is it feels very pensive and you can kind of land there but on the C context it doesn't feel very stable it feels like it wants to go back to C or even if you don't argue that you know it's stable or unstable you have a different vibe versus on over A minor that B tends to sound very different so each sound or each landing note has a different personality so this is the idea of relative scales so in a nutshell relative scales retain the pitches or the notes note names or note frequencies of the original parent scales so if it's C major the notes will continue to be C, D, E, F, G, A, B they'll just have a different leader of the pack so to speak wherein the A minor which is the relative minor will have A as the leader okay and the whole vibe changes because the intervals change from the new root to the to the same seven ingredients now how it is notated in staff notation would be using the key signature concept and the key signatures basically will show you either major or the natural minor scales so the natural minor is also called as a relative minor not to be confused with harmonic minor melodic minor and other minor scales which I have discussed in an exclusive video called minor scales okay so the minor scale theory will be available which I have discussed in an exclusive video so you can check it out in the description it's mentioned very clearly there where I go through all the minor scales in this video because we have derived it from the parent major scale we call it as the relative minor or its official name is the natural minor scale or the aeolian mode now this is how it's notated in our key signatures in staff notation we would have you know a treble clef or a bass clef and on that we will write the number of sharps or flats so if you have zero sharps or zero flats you're referring to a song which is either C major or A natural minor not A harmonic minor A natural minor however if it's D major it'll have the same key signature as its counterpart minor or its cousin minor or relative minor D major is B minor so you need to remember that correlation we've put together a map for you or a chart which you can find on our Patreon which shows you the major scales and the relative minor scales you also have this fancy circle of fifths depiction where you have all the scales there but it's a bit tough to remember I like to use the circle of fifths for other things it's a bit confusing to remember major and minor scales at least for me so we have a chart there do check it out so that's about the relative minor relative is where you retain the pitches or the frequencies or the note values all the seven notes in the set remain and then you have a new leader now let's move on to the parallel scales so how we look at a parallel scale is a parallel scale will retain the root so the root changed for relative right but for parallel considering C I'm going to keep C as my leader earlier the leader changed to A natural minor is the same as C major but now C major is going to have a parallel scale one of the many parallel scales would be C minor which is the parallel minor of C major that's C major and this is the parallel minor not the relative minor so that's C minor or C natural minor now why would you do that well one is the audience doesn't lose sight of the root they feel the root they continue to feel the root but they get a very different mood or a very different theme because the minor sounds very serious and melancholic and pensive like you've lost something or someone in comparison with a major scale which is a lot more you know happier or positive sounding so you would want this in a song maybe in one section you would like the the parallel sound the sadder minor flavor and in one section you would want a happier sound so this is a common requirement which composers and songwriters in general have so if you take how do you build it well you there's no rule building a parallel minor you just stay on the same root and you decide whether you want a parallel vibe to be minor or maybe you want something very dreamy or bright in which case you could do parallel lydian so you're altering the scale C major is now C lydian for the next section or maybe you can do mix a lydian to give you a more braver sound lydian gives you a more like dreamy or a very relaxing sound versus major a very plain sound compared to lydian it's not exotic stable but minor sad pensive serious but all of this continues to have the same root which is C now I will tell you this when you use the parallel minor scales what is very very important is you know what chords can exist from within those parallel minor scales so good tool would be if you know your major scale now you need to figure out okay how do I find the chords of C minor you can start building triads C minor D diminished E flat major F minor G minor A flat major B flat major C minor which is a copy and you could ask yourself which of these chords are different than the source scale which I began with from the major you'll find that quite a few of them are different C minor versus C major huge contrast D diminished what did C major have D minor then E flat major C major didn't even have an E flat in it so the the idea of forming a minor itself is you're messing up with some notes which the major gave you right you're changing the third the sixth and the seventh so a parallel scale you could look at it as a formula relationship between the first scale so if the first scale was major minor is what with respect to major you flat the three you flat the six you flat the seven at least the natural minor works that way the harmonic minor you only flat the six and seven the Dorian you flat the three and the seven you leave the six as it is and then you have the melodic which is just flat three for the most part so you need to know how it compares with the original scale in this case it's major and now the parallel scale is the natural minor where the three the six and the seven are flattened now you have the chords which you need to know via maybe the triad principles and now you figure out which of those chords are going to work for you for the vibe you are trying to give in your song so let's say you're composing a song on C major and you have the standard major chords which is the one major F major which is the four major five major which is G now you realize you made your first melody now in the first section of the song which is something like you like this but it's more like a person who's like very chill very calm very relaxed or like the start of a movie you know where everything is serene but then as a storyteller you want to move forward so we have both the concepts you have the relative concept and the parallel concept right so with the parallel concept which I've been on in the recent few minutes of this tutorial you'll find that if you map out all the parallel chords C minor versus C major and superimpose them you'll realize that maybe you could add or borrow chords from the parallel scale and compose a completely different melody so this one now it can remain but now make something else using the chords of the parallel minor or C minor now I like ending on C major because then I give the audience the the fact that it's still a C major song but I'm just at that one small area I'm borrowing chords is what we call is borrowing so I'm borrowing chords from the parallel minor and I and I repeat by saying it's a parallel minor not the relative minor I'm not borrowing from a minor which is the relative I'm borrowing from C minor which is the parallel of C major so maybe borrow an E flat minor next section almost like in two worlds composing a song and that's how you want to be as a storyteller I guess if you're writing a novel or if you're writing a movie a script for a movie this is how you think you don't want it to generally be in just one room with two actors one scene you want it to change you want different things to happen if a plot a plot twist if you will so this is how you can bring that about as a as a songwriter writing songs on just simple major and minor scales so the parallel concept was that what if you're in the relative concept and you want it to sound different with the same note so this is where again you need to know your chords so the advantage of composing relative music versus parallel music so to speak would be the relative chords would be the same as the parent major you're just going to stress more on the A minor chords what chords give you the vibe of minor well the minor chords so that's your A minor D minor then E minor as you can see visually I'm playing only the white keys on the piano right but if I change the vibe to major see what happens there the whole vibe changes but I'm using the same notes the data set is the same the pitches are the same it's still a b c d e f g or c d e f g a b but with a relative concept it's almost like you're in the same room but you have two different perspectives or two two different states of mind in the same room one is maybe you're kind of sad you're lost you feel that you can't break free out of that prison so to speak but then in the chorus it's a bit more uplifting where you you know are seeing an outlet to break out or it's more of a psychological thing I guess so that's how you could perhaps use a relative minor I don't want to give you specific thoughts to compose with but I'm just giving you some examples while if you ask me the parallel minor or the parallel modal shift is changing the scale so your vibe is going to change your scene is going to change your actor will probably change in your perceived movie your lyrics will probably need to have a very huge contrast while in the relative setting you kind of have the same story but the verse becomes more like a journey or something pensive or a question while your chorus becomes more like an answer or a conclusion or something positive as many of the choruses we listen to are right guys so I hope that clarifies the distinction between a relative scale and a parallel scale we don't read on parallel scales that much in our regular music theory books but it's a very important tool and sometimes composers we don't even care sometimes if we are on the relative scales we are just like hey we are just on the key signature of D major or E major we just float around but when a parallel thing happens it becomes a very unique thing a unique experience everyone has to up their game change their chords change their tune your their melody change the lyrics sometimes or the mood of the film you're trying to compose for so these are interesting worlds to be in and just in conclusion if you say C major as your target scale or your parent scale the relative minor will be a sixth or a major sixth up try to learn your intervals so that'll be a minor now if you take a minor the if you started with a minor then the relative major could be considered as C major so the relative minor of C major is a minor the relative major of a natural minor is C major the parallel minor of C major is C minor C natural minor which can be built by altering certain intervals the third the sixth and the seventh become flat and immediately you form the minor or the parallel minor if you stick with the same root C and what's interesting now is you have formed the C natural minor or the parallel minor but C minor doesn't that have its own relative major it does right it has E flat major which is its relative major because they share the same key signature B flat E flat and A flat are the altered notes use you I guess you see where I'm going with this you're creating an entire you know neighborhood of scales which are parallel to each other and relative to each other so you have like a nice web as a composer where you're literally thinking like a spider so to speak so all of this stuff for you to for you to actually execute it you need to write this down is my advice and you need to constantly remind yourselves of scales practice your scales write it down practice notation as well and if you want a structured environment to figure all this out we have a lot of resources you can go over to Nathaniel school.com consider a structured course of ours called music method which is our flagship course you can do that virtually online or if you're in Bangalore you can consider one of our branches and it's always going to give you a strong foundation if time zones don't match or if you don't have that much time for a regular music course we also have video courses video instruction material which is available again on Nathaniel school.com so do consider either of these and Patreon will be there for all the notes to supplement this lesson and everything we've done in the past and which we are going to do in the future right guys thanks a ton for watching the lesson stay tuned to our channel for more cheers