Relative Minor Keys - 3 Easy Ways to Find Them

Take a look at these two scales. What do you notice about

them

? Are they similar in any way? If you look closely, you can see that they have exactly the same notes inside

them

and in exactly the same order, but they start with a different point. Where you see, this scale starts on a and this scale starts on F sharp and since they start in different places, that technically makes them different scales, you see where a scale starts, it's really important, two scales can have the same notes within them, but depending on where you start the scale, the name of the scale changes, the scale above is a major scale and the scale below is an F

minor

scale, but these two scales have a very special relationship with each other since they share the same notes.

Within them they are called

relative

tonalities, we say that F sharp

minor

is the

relative

minor of a major and a major is the relative major of F sharp minor. The reason it is useful to know the relative key is because the two

keys

are very close. related and when we play music we can switch between these two

keys

very easily as they share many of the same notes, many of the notes and chords that you play in major also work in F sharp minor and vice versa, however the point of gravity changes depending whatever key you're in because the root has changed here's an A major scale and here's a side note of the F sharp minor scale for those of you who don't know that the root of a major is A and A. root of f sharp minor is f sharp the root is the center of gravity of a key it is the base of operations it is also called the tonic now let's say you are playing in a major key and you want to

find

out what the relative minor key is, there are a few

ways

on that you can do that and I'm going to show you how the first one is that we can move the root down three semitones, also known as semitones, for example, if we were playing in the key of C major and we wanted to

find

the relative pitch. minor tone we would simply move three semitones down the chromatic scale from note c side note what is the chromatic scale? the chromatic scale is just a scale that plays the 12 pitches so every note if you play every note on the white piano and black keys moving up this is the chromatic scale I won't skip a single note if you were playing it on a guitar or a ukulele you just take your finger and move it up one fret to the neck and that would be your chromatic scale okay so I said we want to find the relative minor of the key of C and I'm going to go down three semitones to the right , so I'm going to go one, two, three and I'll get to the note a, which means that a minor is the relative minor of C major and if I wanted to write these two scales, let's write our C major scale first and remember we go down three semitones one two three we get to a so I'm going to start with a right because it's minor and I'm just going to use the same notes in the C major scale, but starting at a, then a, then b, then c, then d, then e , then f and then g, so exactly the same notes. different order C major to minor, so here's our C major scale and here an A minor scale, okay, so let's do another one, what's the relative minor of E flat major?

So first let's write down our E flat major scale, a quick side note if you don't I don't know how to calculate the notes in your major scale. I have a video on the circle of fifths and it shows you how to create the circle of fifths and then it also shows you how you can figure out where all your major scales are from. the fifth circle, so I'm going to put a link to that video below and it's a great way to be able to figure out the notes in your major scale so you don't have to keep Googling them to remember which one you are.

You can stop and figure it out yourself because the more you figure it out, the more you'll start to memorize it, so now, to find the relative minor key of E flat, we're going to count three semitones on the chromatic scale. scale, so we're going to find E flat on our keyboard and we're going to go down three semitones so that one, two, three, comes to c, which means that C minor is our relative key, so now let's write down our C minor scale, so what is? the first note will be in our C minor scale, well it's al

ways

in the name of the scale, it will be a C, so C is the first note and then remember I said it has exactly the same notes as E flat, but let's just go a starts on c then c then d then what comes after E flat right then f G flat and B flat then E flat major scale c minor scale exactly the same notes starting in different places here's an E flat major scale and now a C minor scale is fine. do one more, so what is the relative minor of D flat major?

So just for reference, let's write down our D flat major scale. Okay, so I'm going to find D flat and I'm going to go down three semitones in the chromatic. scale, so one, two, three and I get to B flat, so B flat will be the relative minor of D flat major, so let's write our B flat minor scale, we'll start with a, you guessed it, B flat, so What's coming? next C right then D flat E flat F G flat and A flat so there you have it D flat major and B flat minor they are relative keys, they have exactly the same notes, they are just starting in different places here is a D flat major scale now a B flat minor scale, well, let's look at another way to discover the relative minor key.

Okay, so the second way is to look at the sixth degree of the major scale, what does that mean exactly? Let's go back to our C major friend and write. take out a C major scale now let's number the scale, I said you need to look at the sixth degree of the major scale, so what note is the sixth degree one, two, three, four, five, six, it's a, that means a minor is our relative key, let's see? in another then, what is the relative minor of E major first let's write down our E major scale now let's number the scale one two three four five six seven what is the sixth degree of the scale is C sharp therefore C sharp minor is the relative minor of E major, so let's write down a C sharp minor scale just for fun, see if you can figure it out yourself what the starting note of C sharp is and then like I said, it has exactly the same notes as E major, we're just starting. the C sharp now then C sharp then D sharp then E then F sharp then G sharp then a and then b let's listen to an E major scale now let's listen to a C sharp minor scale okay let's do one more so what's the relative B flat minor minor, so first let's write down our B flat major scale, now let's number the scale one, two, three, four, five, six and seven, which is the sixth degree of the scale, it's G, so , G minor will be our relative minor key, so write down our G minor scale, so where do we start on G and again it has exactly the same notes as B flat major, starting on G, so G, B flat, C, E flat and F, let's listen to a B flat major scale now let's listen to a G minor scale now I'll show you another way to find out your relative minor key using the circle of fifths, so you'll often see the circle of fifths with the relative minor keys written inside the circle.

Right now we only have the major keys written on the outside, but we're going to fill in the minor keys on the inside so we can figure out the minor key just by looking at the circle and not really knowing anything else. move like it's basically a quarter circle to get to our relative minor key. I like to think of it as three spaces one two three, so what I mean by that is that the relative minor key of C major will be one two three. a minor, so we can write a minor inside right next to it, below c, okay, now let's figure out the relative minor of g, so let's move three spaces to the right, one, two, three, it's e, so we have e minor is relative minor key of g major now let's do it for d one two three we have ab so we have b minor great, let's continue with a we have one two three so we could write f sharp or g flat but since a is sharp key, which means it has sharps, it doesn't have flats, we're going to put F sharp minor instead of G flat minor, so F sharp minor for those of you who don't know G flat and F sharp are what we call inharmonic. equivalents, meaning it's the same pitch, the same note, it just has two different names, so we could call this note G-flat or F-sharp, we could call this note b or C-flat, we could call this note D flat or C sharp the same note just two different names, okay, now let's look to find it for E major, so we'll move in three spaces, one, two, three, we get to this D flat or C sharp, since the key of E major has sharps, we're going to go with the sharp, so we'll use C sharp minor, okay, now let's find the key of B, so we'll move three spaces one, two, three and we'll get to a flat, now if it's a key that has sustained. so I want to give this a sharp name so that the inharmonic equivalent of a flat is G sharp.

What does that mean that G-sharp and flat are exactly the same notes? They're just two different names, so I'll write G sharp minor here. because I want to keep the sharps with the sharp keys and the flats with the flat keys. Okay, now let's find it for G flat, so we go one, two, three and we get to E flat, so E flat minor will be the relative minor of G flat, so e. flat minor now, what if I wanted to find the relative minor of F sharp, so I'm going to write down what is the inharmonic equivalent of E flat, which is D sharp, so E flat and D sharp are the same note, like this what could do it? that the relative minor of G-flat is E-flat minor the relative minor of F-sharp is D-sharp minor I hope this isn't too confusing I basically just keep sharps with sharps and flats with flats see if you're new to music theory and still trying to figure out Take all this in and suddenly you feel really overwhelmed by all these notes and these inharmonic equivalents and don't worry too much about it, to be honest, you're not going to play in the keys of G-flat or C-sharp very often and don't get stuck. so or don't give up right now and say I'm not going to continue, it will get easier as we get to this side of the circle, so this is the most confusing and dense part of the circle, so keep moving forward even if you don't understand 100 of everything because it will eventually start to click now, let's find the relative minor of D flat, so we're I'm going to move over three spaces one two three B flat then flat minor what is the relative minor of a flat?

In fact, I'm going to delete them because I think they're going to be confusing the more things we've written in the circle. It's just going to be more confusing and I don't want you to get confused, okay? So what is the relative minor of a flat major? So we'll move over one, two, three, f, to have F minor. Okay, what about E flat one, two, three? We have C minor, what about B flat one two three? We have G minor. See, I told you it gets easier in this area. What about f one two three? We have D then D minor, so that's the other way we can calculate. taking out a relative minor key is with the circle of the fifth simply moving over three spaces on the circle again.

I'm going to put a link to my circle of fifths video in the description of this video that you can watch now, eventually I'll get to it. To make a video that continues with these relative keys, maybe I'll show you some exercises that you can do so you can really put it into practice in your work, but this is a good place to start to figure out how to find your relative minor key. and knowing that the notes are the same in both, I hope you found this video useful. I plan on making more music theory videos so if you have any specific topics you would like me to make a video on let me know in the comments or if you just want to say hello please like this video and subscribe to my channel if you still You haven't and you can press the alert button and bell to receive notifications when I post new videos.

That's all, have a wonderful rest of your day and thank you so much for watching.