Chords in relation to key

Have a look at this - it will give you just about every chord you can make up from the major scale the key is based on. There's also a good post on here (somewhere, I couldn't find it myself :() about keys made from minor scales, and how you can interchange the chords from the different types of minor scales fairly freely.

The F minor and G minor are not "normal" chords in the key of C, that's true. They are borrowed chords from a parallel key. What this means is that instead of having a major chord that is normal for that key you use a minor chord instead, or vice versa. For example, instead of using A minor in the key of C you use A major, or instead of F major you use F minor. You can swap diminished chords as well, such as using B major instead of B dim in the key of C.

In this particular chord progression the Gm F Fm Gm bit at the end creates a nice string of descending notes (Bb A Ab G) which keeps it all together.

If you guys could maybe go a little deper into it it might help even more.It just seems like Ive hit a brick wall in my playing and Im hopeing to find the key to unlocking my true potential as a musician

I'd love to, but that tool is built to the limit of my current knowledge... it's the base I'm working from, I just thought I'd make something to help drum it into me properly and share what I've got to so far. That and transposition is a real chore for me (I have to transpose just about everything I play down at least a few steps as I can't hit even moderately high notes), so it killed two birds with one stone.

On a positive note though, I've found the thread I was referring to:
https://www.guitarnoise.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=24695 . That, in turn, was in reference to this article: https://www.guitarnoise.com/article.php?id=55

OK...

The purpose of a chord is to harmonize a melody note.

So when we talk about a song being in the key of C, you've got melody notes C, D, E, F, G, A, B... and while the usual way to harmonize them is to stay within the key, resulting in chords C, Dm, Em, F, G (or G7), Am, Bº, it's not the only way.

But other ways still maintain the same purpose: to harmonize a melody note.

The easiest 'outside' chords to visualize will be chords with the same root as a melody note, and these are called 'borrowed' chords. You're taking a melody note, like D - but instead of harmonizing it with a minor chord, you harmonize it with a major chord. Or take a chord like F, and harmonize it with a minor chord instead. They're called borrowed chords because of the way they're visualized - you can think "parallel key" and have a new chord choice.

But it's really got little to do with the parallel key. Using Fm gives you notes F-Ab-C. You've still got a melody note (probably F, maybe C), just a different harmony that leads to an out-of-key chord.

There's no rule that says the chord root must be in key either... most people do it that way, because as I said - it's easy to visualize. But there's no reason to restrict yourself to melody roots - your list of chords could easily be expanded to include Ab (Ab-C-Eb), etc.

If you look at sheet music before about 1950, you'll find outside chords used all the time. Take a tune like "Ain't Misbehavin"... here's the progression, with the outside chords in bold - the tune is in Eb.

Eb Eº7 Fm7 F#º7 Eb G7#5 Ab6 Db9 Eb C7 Fm7 Bb9 G7 C7 F7 Bb7 Eb

But every 'outside' chord harmonizes the in-key melody note; that Eº7 appears over Bb, and the chord is E-G-Bb-Db; F#º7 comes in over C, and the chord is F#-A-C-Eb; G7#5 appears over Eb, which is G-B-D#(Eb)-F and so on.

1950 seems to be about the point where music starts becoming 'popular' in the sense of songwriters being members of the general population rather than trained musicians. So today people rely more on progressions - "what should come next?" - instead of composition "what will sound good?"

As others have pointed out, a musician needn't be confined to the usual diatonic chords of the prevailing key. Parallel and other keys can be used, and in fact, the musician has all 12 notes of the chromatic scale at his or her disposal. But there are consequences of using such notes and chords. If you just throw them in at random, the result will be musical chaos and a rapidly dwindling audience. So it's up to the musician to understand the consequences of every choice made.

To complement NoteBoat and other's impressive explanations, I'd like to include a simpler example for anyone just starting to understand how chords, keys and notes relate to each other.

For example look at this very common progression in C major:
C....Am....Dm7....G
You can understand that completely because every chord contains notes from the C major scale.

But what if you decide to use D7 instead of D minor7?
D7 contains a note (F#) that is foreign to the prevailing key of C major so you need to be aware of the consequences of doing that.
If you play that progression you'll hear that D7 now seems to want to go to G with greater urgency than Dmin7 did. This is for a couple of reasons
1. The foreign note is noticeably unstable and has a strong tendency to rise to the nearest stable note, in this case, G
2. The D7 chord containing it is also foreign to the key of C but happens to be the dominant seventh chord of the key of G, and being dissonant, wants to resolve naturally to its 'parent' chord of G. By allowing this foreign chord to follow its natural resolution to G, you create a strong impression that G is somehow more important than it was before, and even threatens to become more important than C itself.
It would be very easy to change key at this point to G. If you just add a few more D7 to G changes, your ear will soon forget about the key of C and you will be in the new key of G. (This process is called modulation).
However, you may want to stay in the key of C and you could easily do that by following G with G7. G7 contains F natural again and G7 being the dominant seventh of C will again want to resolve naturally to C.
Whichever you choose, adding that foreign chord D7 certainly added an unexpected touch of colour to an otherwise straightforward diatonic progression.

To summarise the main point of all this, you are not limited to any particular choice of notes or chords, but as a musician, you must understand the consequences of every decision made regarding their use.

Nicely explained Fretsource, thanks. (Not to downplay the usefulness of the other contributions, of course :)).

I'll just say though, that simpler doesn't just benefit those just beginning to understand it. Sometimes you can get through something uneasily, but still understanding it to a useful degree. Then along comes an explanation that makes it just click, and you're off :mrgreen:

I think it's great to be able to wander outside the boundries and truly express the song (as long as you understand the consequence). It's a lot to know, so you can understand why so many people stick to the simple I-IV-V progressions. This would make an excellent intermediate/advanced lesson.

If you look at sheet music before about 1950, you'll find outside chords used all the time. Take a tune like "Ain't Misbehavin"... here's the progression, with the outside chords in bold - the tune is in Eb.

Eb Eº7 Fm7 F#º7 Eb G7#5 Ab6 Db9 Eb C7 Fm7 Bb9 G7 C7 F7 Bb7 Eb

One of the things that happens when you "go outside" the key is that you can will find that the chords tend to create little areas of the song that you can view as having gone through a temporary key change (though the song's key signature doesn't change).

In Noteboat's example, the progression G7 C7 F7 can be viewed as II7 V7 I7 in F.

The progression Ab6 Db9 Eb can be viewed as I IV V in Ab.

Jazz players will talk alot about "key of the moment" as a means of deciding how to improvise over the changes.

Just a little thought:

F minor in the key of C comes from the Moll Dur Scale which is in fact a major scale with a lowered 6th degree:

C, D, E, F, G, ->Ab<-, B, C

This scale affects the II (Dm7b5), IV (Fm) and VII (Bdim) in C major and is often used freely to "darken" the sound of common progressions.

A common progression in which this scale is used on IV is:

C - G/B - C7/Bb - F/A - F/Ab - G7 - C
which would translate in:

I - V6 - [V]2 - IV6 - IV6md - V - I (md = Moll Dur) which is in fact just an outstretched I - V - IV - V - I progression!

The Gm in your progression can be seen as II in the key of F as Kingpantzer pointed out.

Noteboats progression is also very interesting but I have some different explanations from Kingpantzer:

G7#5 - Ab6 - Db7 - Eb

I do not consider this to be in Ab except for G7#5 - Ab which is a (jazz) variation of G7 - Ab6 in which G7 can be seen as a #IV4/3 in Ab.
Db7 can be explained in two ways:
1. tritone substitute of G7 which would be the dominant for VI (In Eb)
2. jazz alteration of Fm7b5 which would be IImd
I prefer the first explanation because the Db is not part of the Moll Dur scale.
Also there is a problem with perceiving Eb as V in Ab here because that would suggest a dominant function which it doesn't seem to have here.

G7 - C7 - F7 - Bb7 - Eb

One could argue that G7 - C7- F7 is a progression in F but I do not like to think that the tonic (I) can be a dominant. Of course now you're asking: but a blues has a dominant tonic, however I like to think that blues progression consist of chords derived from a different scale which produces static dominants!

For the above progression I would say: [V] - [V] - [V] - V - I , so all secondary dominants (except for Bb7) in the key of Eb

Thanks to every one I hope I learn alot from this forum so if any one see's something that might be helpful feel free to point it out to me

hey here is another question I know the 7 chords have a strong pull to resolve but what about 9ths,11ths,and 13ths and if so what do they normally want to resolve to

9ths, 11ths, and 13ths are extensions of the dominant 7th. Like the dominant 7th, they naturally resolve down a perfect fifth in an authentic cadence.

I wish I had a mesure of the knowledge you contain in your head pertaining to music Ive been playing for 6 yrs., put it down for a year and now Ive started playing again. I still think I suck.Most of my friends say Im good but I want to be the best so if you have anything about guitar to say let me know I have a voracious appetite for knowledge concerning guitar and theory