Borrowed Chords, Made Simple.

Posted onAugust 16, 2012

GU IT AR TH E OR Y 201 : IN TER MED IA TE CH OR D TH EORY.

One of the neat things I learned early on, when I first started trying to write my own music, was the concept of diatonic chords.
Within a given keyand for convenience I will stick with the Key of C Major, with no sharps, no flatsall chords follow a pattern of
major and minor which keeps all notes of all chords within that key (Fig.1). Note that the root note of each chord (the note the chord is
named from) follows the scale of the key, for example, C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C and that the major/minor pattern is consistent, CM, Dm,
Em, FM, G7, Am, B.

The common convention is to use capital-case and lower-case Roman numerals for the major and minor chords, respectively. Thus
the root chord, C Major, is written I while A minor, the sixth chord in the chord scale, is written vi.
If you are not familiar with the diatonic progression, get caught up by studying atWikipediaandYouTube.
For simplicity, we will leave out the more complex jazz chords, 7ths, 9ths, 11ths etc, and instead focus on the basic chord, the triad,
with the exception of the V7 chord, the dominant 7, whichalthough the 7thnote is optionalcreates a powerful pull back to the I
chord. Later we will see why.
Now lets move to the idea of borrowed chords. Take a chord from another key and insert into the same system, for example, a Dm
chord can be replaced with a DM chord. This chord contains a note that is out-of-key, in this case we changed an F note in the Dm
chord to an F# note in the DM chord (Fig. 2). This out-of-key note creates dissonance, a tension that wants to be resolved back to the
original key, a tension that the listener subconsciously expects to relax at some point. The tension created by the out-of-key note is
resolved by step change, usually up, for example: F# to G.

According to instructor Stuart Walthall, the most common root movements in a chord progression are:
1. Up a 4th
2. Up a 2nd
3. Down a 3rd
This means if we are in the key of C, playing a Dm chord (the ii chord), the most common next chords to play would be G7, Em, or
B(Fig. 3). Now this is not a hard and fast rule: you can pick any chord you wish, depending on your song, note movement within the
chords, whatever, but these are the strongest chord changes.

I must point out that there are some other theories regarding strong chord changes, but for this study, this will do.
Lets consider borrowed chords (Fig 4). Notice that these are almost the same as the first two columns in Fig 3 above. By sharpening
the third on all the minor chords in the key, we create an even stronger pull to the up a 4th chord.

There you have it. By plugging in a borrowed chord, we add an extra tension to the chord progression that wants to be resolved in
the roughly the same way as the diatonic chords would: up a 4th. Play around with this idea and you will add flavor to your music,
tension and resolution that is commonly found in ragtime, jazz and blues.
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Two more points: the vii chord is by default diminished (in the key of C, it is B). In common usage, this is a rarely used chord. It pulls
strongest towards to the I chord, which is one step above it (B to CM). Often songwriters will employ the borrowed chord BbM in
its stead (Fig 2). This involves the flattening of one note in the chord, the root. While this can be a topic for another article, I would like
to point out that we are borrowing from a neighboring key, the key of F major, which is only one note different from C major, that note
being Bb.

Another chord that is often substituted in place of the vii chord is the V7. Notice in Fig 5 that the vii contains all the same notes
foundwithinthe V7 chord (G7). Plug this in to Fig 3, and you have some redundancy (Fig 6), however, this is a nice trick to get around
using such a uncomfortable chord as vii.

One last thing: Fm is the only chord that is changed from Major to minor, which involves flattening the 3rd. This is a downward change
from A to Ab (although the Ab has the same intonation as a G#). So, we would likely continue this downward movement another
step to G, the 5thnote in the I chord CM. Why would we consider this movement strongest to CM rather than G7? Although G7 is just
as valid, and may be preferred, depending on the song, the measure we are in, and the time to resolve; but because with CM the
tension is greater and offers more resolution when we think in terms of the CM chord: CEG. Consider that C G# is an augmented
fifth. This is a very strong dissonance that wants to resolve quickly back to C G, a perfect fifth. FM has notes FAC. Fm has notes
F(Ab)C (remember Ab=G#) and thus contains both C and G#, the augmented fifth. Play it for yourself, C G# then C G. Powerful,
eh?