Having established that changing key is a valid way of adding interest and contrast to a song, how might we achieve it?
First a recap
Last post-about-key-changes we reached a conclusion:
Being ‘in C’ means two things.
- Only the notes from the C scale
- The C note as a ‘home’ or tonic note
Which can be generalised as
Being in a key means two things:
- Using only the notes from that key
- Using one of that group of notes as a ‘home’ or tonic note
Therefore… da da daaaaa!
To change key you can do one of these or both:
- Change the group of notes you’re using.
- Change the note you’re using as a tonic note.
Got that?
The obvious next step would be to go straight to the kind of key change we are most used to, which is the cheesey up-a-tone boy band change.
So we will.
The chords in C major are: C Dm Em F G A m Bdim.
A tone up from this is D major, and the chords in D major are: D Em F#m G A Bm C#dim.
According to an old podcast episode of chord facts, we can generalise the chords in the major scale as: I ii iii IV V vi VIIdim (lower case means minor).
So… if we had the chord progression C G Am F, we could generalise and say that’s I V vi IV. So in D major we’d get D A Bm G.
Neatly, this changes both the group of notes you’re using (there are different notes in C Major and D Major) and the tonic note (from C to D). So one is higher pitched than the other, but both progressions sound the same apart from that.
Which means the same melody will fit if you play it a tone up.
For an example, do a youtube search for Westlife. If you can bear it.



[...] Yes, I’m abandoning any hint of respectability I might have retained. I like cheesy heavy metal. Love it. And in this post we’re going to see a very different use the basic key change idea we talked about before. [...]
[...] Yes, I’m abandoning any hint of respectability I might have retained. I like cheesy heavy metal. Love it. And in this post we’re going to see a very different use the basic key change idea we talked about before. [...]