Parallel Major and Minor

Previously we talked about relative major and minor, such as C major and A minor, which are three half steps apart. Relative major and minor scales have the same notes, which explains why switching between them in a melody is easy.

The parallel key is when we just change the mode, major to minor or vice versa. E.g. for C major, the parallel minor is C minor. Why would we do that? Apparently, borrowing a chord from the parallel key, called mode mixture, is a very common way to add some special mood or accent to the melody.

Let's take a look at “Those Were the Days” melody again, but this time from the beginning of the song. Playing in A minor:

We'll cut this fragment short and will come back to the next four measures on the next page when we talk about secondary dominant!

Notice how the melody which is in A minor key borrows the A major chord to develop. It can happen with any chord from the parallel key, but most often I see it with the tonic and the subdominant chords, when the melody in minor borrows those chords from its parallel major.

The popular chord progression here, played in A minor, sound like this. First, we hear a regular minor melody, e.g. Am Dm E Am. But then, we play A major and from there we often go to Dm, G, C; so borrowing the A major chord from the parallel major helped us move to the relative major. From there, it's probably something like F Dm E Am to come back:

Play Am Dm E Am, then A Dm G C, then F Dm E Am:

Sample melody to show the transitions

Let me give you a sample melody to show how this and similar chord progressions work so you could hear it in the music you listen to. The first line is a simple A minor progression, the second line borrows a chord from A major and then switches to the parallel C major:

Returning home from where the melody brought us will be tricky! There are a few ways, and you can often hear them in the modern music.

Often, we go through the subdominant of the relative major, which can easily change to our own subdominant (F to D minor):

We could also borrow the D major chord here to create a stronger pull home:

And finally, there is another way of returning home! Try playing this unexpected B major chord there, and on the next page we'll talk more about it and I'll explain why it appears there and how it works.