Playing Piano: Finding Chords P.4

In this lesson I explain how to use major and minor 3rds to build major, minor, dominate, and diminished chords!

So we count back three semitones from E-flat (Demonstration) 1, 2, 3 that means that C minor is the relative minor. Now, C Major and C minor, either one of them do not own the key signature any more than the other one does. But the major key seems to have more preference by a lot of people maybe because it is happier or something I have not no idea. Probably because it was easy to write with in the older it times and people wanted to hear something happy rather than something sad, that is my guess. Now, how are we going to tell if it is in C minor or in E flat major? Well, one of the first things we look at is the first key. The first note is a B, it is a B flat and you are thinking, okay so that does not have anything to do with E or C. Well, actually it does. Usually, the start of a piece will start either on the tonic of the key which is the first note of that scale, so if it is an E flat major the tonic would be E flat. Or it starts on the dominant which in this case would be B flat. The dominant (Demonstration) is the fifth note. (Demonstration) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, so that is B flat. So guess what, he started on B flat which is the dominant of E flat major, but that still does not mean that it is going to be an E flat major. Let us take another—some other looks. There is an E flat down here. So it is going from B flat to E flat. That is a classic example of—that strongly suggesting that it should be an E key of E flat major. Okay, let’s keep looking. Now, a way to tell if it is in the minor key of that, is all you do is—what you do is, say you are in you are not sure if it is E flat Major or C minor. You look through the music and if you see that the dominant is raised of the major key that means that it is going to probably be in a minor key. So if we can see any B naturals here that will give us a sign that it is in the harmonic minor, which is C minor. Wow I hope I am not losing any notes of these. But you see he is notorious for using chromaticisms, so he changes his accidental slot. So these are all different ways you can find which keys it is on. Okay I am going to save the best method for last. Just flip to the very end of the song and look at the bottom note. Is that an E or is it a C? That is an E flat. So that tells me it is in E flat Major because a piece usually always ends on its tonic. So if it is in C minor there is no way it will ever end on an E flat and that is how it works. You just go to the end of the piece and look at what note is on the bottom. But you also need to look at the key signature, so that is the big thing hear you too.