GUITAR
CLOSELY-RELATED KEYS | David Harsh
Have you ever played several songs in a sequence ? I ’ m quite sure you have , but if you haven ’ t , that time is coming . Maybe you ’ re leading a set of worship songs , performing a concert , or you ’ re thinking about a recording order for an album .
There are several factors to consider when we put songs into sets , one of which is the keys the songs are in .
To get the most out of what I ’ m offering here , I entreat you to watch the video I ’ ve made to accompany this article . It will help you grasp these concepts much more fully . While it ’ s available , please access the video at : www . GuitarSuccess4U . com / CloseKeys
In my early years of worship leading from the guitar , I would put together a set of songs that were all in the same key , just to be “ on the safe side .” But we shouldn ’ t ever be at the mercy of the key of a song . We should be able to choose the songs based on tempo , groove , and of course , theme .
With this in mind , I want to talk briefly about what ’ s involved with accessing closely-related keys .
STARTING FROM A MAJOR KEY
Let ’ s begin with the commonly-used guitar key of D Major . I ’ ve provided what I like to call my Super Spy Decoder for the seven diatonic chords in this key . They are : D Major , E minor , F # minor , G Major , A Major , B minor , and C # diminished .
If you ’ ve played a song in D Major , you ’ ve likely used most of those chords … perhaps not the C # diminished chord as much , because it has such an unstable , dissonant quality to it . You ’ ll see that in my decoder , I ’ ve created an orange box with an “ X ” through that chord . But the other six chords , including the Major I chord , are all a part of the key of D Major .
Now , if you ’ re familiar with the Circle of Fifths , you know what a powerful tool it is . If you ’ re not , I ’ m going to provide a couple little slices of it to illustrate how to access closely-related keys .
As you look at my first little six-chord slide of the Circle , you ’ ll find five keys that are “ closelyrelated ” to D Major . What do you notice ? All the chords in D are here except for the C # diminished chord .
These chords are the starting chords of the closely-related keys . Moving counterclockwise from D to G , or clockwise from D to A , we are advancing by 5 th along the Circle of 5ths . The relative minor keys for each of these three Major keys are inside the circle . B minor is the relative minor key of D Major . E minor is the relative minor key of G Major . And F # minor is the relative minor key of A Major .
So , if I ’ m leading a song in D Major , and I want to think about other keys I could play in after