Borrowing Chords From Parallel Keys to Spice up Your Chord Progressions

Video Cliffs:

0:00 – Intro

1:05 – Quick Review of What “Diatonic Chords” Are

3:48 – Incorporating “Borrowed Chords”

5:09 – Musical Example – All Diatonic Chords

6:40 – Borrowed Chord Musical Example #1

8:11 – Borrowed Chord Musical Example #2

9:41 – Borrowed Chord Musical Example #3

10:38 – Borrowed Chord Musical Example #4

11:31 – Borrowed Chord Musical Example #5

12:10 – Final Words Regarding Parallel MAJOR Keys

Strictly Diatonic Chord Progressions

There are many many songs and chord progressions that sound great, and they are strictly diatonic. In other words, they do not use any out-of-key chords at all. This concept is explained in more detail in these two lessons:

If you recall, the circle of fifths groups diatonic chords like so:

These are the 6 diatonic chords for the key of C major. There is still one more diatonic chord, which is a diminished triad or half-diminished chord. However for the purpose of this lesson, we will just be focusing on major and minor chords.

When you want to create a chord progression “in a key”, you simply can’t go wrong with using any or all 6 of the available diatonic chords for that particular key.

However, sometimes you may want more…

Welcome to Borrowing Chords

If you get bored with using only diatonic chords, a good place to look is towards the parallel minor of whatever key you are in.

So if you are in the key of C major, you would look to the key of C minor to “borrow” chords from.

The circle of fifths also conveniently places the 6 diatonic chords for the parallel minor key directly next to the original key:

Notice how the parallel minor key (C minor) is directly next to the original key that we started with (C major).

Well there you have 6 brand spankin’ new chords to pull from to incorporate into your C major chord progression.

The 5 examples in the video are done in the key of E major, so the 6 diatonic chords are as follows:

…and the chords from which I am borrowing come from the parallel minor key, which is E minor:

Example #1 incorporates the G major chord

Example #2 utilizes the “Mario Cadence”, which uses the C major and D major chords

Example #3 demonstrates the common IV – iv – I song ending, which borrows the A minor chord

Example #4 borrows the C major chord

Example #5 borrows the D major chord

Borrowing from the Parallel Major Key

In this lesson, we started in the key of E major. We then looked towards the key of E minor to borrow chords from. The 5 examples in the video demonstrate exactly that.

Now, what about if we were to consider our original starting key to be C# minor? C# minor is the relative minor of E major.

Since we are already starting in a minor key, and writing our song/chord progression accordingly, maybe we could look to the PARALLEL MAJOR key to borrow some chords from.

The parallel major of C# minor would be C# major. However, most of the major keys are referred to by their flat names. Therefore the parallel major key would be Db major. Get it?

Damn enharmonics always making complicated things even more complicated!

Anyway, check it out:

And there you have it, directly next to the original key is the parallel key and its’ 6 chords.

So…

The million dollar question is, can you create a diatonic chord progression in the key of C# minor, and “borrow” some chords from this parallel major key while still sounding good?

I don’t know. Try it out, and let me know how it goes :).

Have fun!