Music Key, chord & mode table

[Anonymous]

Michael, I’m not sure what musical technical stuff I have in my head. I have a hard time remembering the sharps and flats in the piece of music I’m playing! Too much Captain Morgan perhaps? – LOL

[Anonymous]

The whole point of my table was having these things to hand, so I didn’t have to remember them.
I don’t think I stand a chance of improvisation whilst playing. I’ll be content just to compose new music and play from my printed sheet music. If I can play really well from sheet music I’ll be a very happy chap indeed!

Cheers

[Michael]

yeah, it takes a while for sure. A good thing is to spend some time each practice just working on those scales every single time we practice. For me, it really helped to take one scale at a time and working on it over and over instead of trying to learn too many scales at once. Take all the time we need to really work on those “pesky” scales, learning them inside-and-out and then balance our practice out with learning things like tunes. Have you checked out Johnny’s ebook on learning to play the Saxophone, or his daily practice routines? There’s loads of great tips along the lines of what we’re talking about here. To be able to site read from your sheet music and play along accordingly is a GREAT skill to have. Keep at it Jeff, it’ll happen for you 🙂

[Anonymous]

Hi Michael, I’ve modified the table for looking up chords. What do you think?
My YTS-62 is in the workshop for a complete overhaul, I’m looking forward to playing it with new pads etc.

[Anonymous]

The table may seem confusing at first glance, so here is an explanation of four ways I use the table.

1) To identify the key of the music for different modes.
Say the music has four sharps – the key could be in either E Major or C# minor.
If the music has four flats – the key could be in either Ab Major or F minor.
Using the top row one can identify the key in other modes besides the common Major (Ionian) and Minor (Aeolian) modes.

2) To transpose music.
To transpose piano (Concert) music for the Tenor (Bb) sax – look up the note in the 1st column and use the note in the 2nd column.
To transpose piano (Concert) music for the Alto (Eb) sax – look up the note in the 1st column and use the note in the 6th column.
To transpose Tenor (Bb) sax to Alto (Eb) sax – look up the note in the 2nd column and use the note in the 6th column.

3) To work out the notes of chords used in the music – let’s use C Major for the example – look at the notes of the Key.
The notes for C Major are C Major – D minor – E minor – F Major – G Major – A minor – B Diminished.

If we are using the II-V-I (2-5-1) chord progression – in C major it will be Dm7 – G7 – CM7.

The pattern for Minor Seventh (m7) = 1,3b,5,7b therefore the notes for Dm7 = D,F,A,C.

The pattern for Seventh (7) = 1,3,5,7b therefore the notes for G7 = G,B,D,F.

The pattern for Major Seventh (M7) = 1,3,5,7 therefore the notes for CM7 = C,E,G,B.

The bottom rectangle contains the common different chord patterns.

4) The columns run according to the circle of fifths.

F – C – G – D – A – E – B(Cb) – F#(Gb) – C#(Db) – G#(Ab) – D#(Eb) – A#(Bb) – E#(F) – B#(C) etc.

It’s interesting how music works, I’m learning something new all the time!

[Andrew Gibson]

Hi Dazza.

Like you, I thought there must be an easier way than memorising countless scales, chords etc so I tried to look at some of the relationships. Here’s some that helped me and meant I had to memorise only a few notes of any scale.

1. Major scales. I found that a major scale can be derived by playing the first four notes of a major scale, and then the first three notes of the fifth note’s OWN major scale.
D: D E F# G + (A B C#)
A: A B C# D + (E F# G#)

2. The minor blues scale. Take the first 4 notes of any blues scale and add the first 2 notes of the fifth note’s OWN blues scale.
D: D F G G# + (A C)
A: A C D D# + (E G)

3. Natural minor scale. If you know the 3b, then a minor scale is the first two notes of the major scale plus 5 notes of the 3b’s OWN major scale:

D minor scale: D E + (F G A A# C)

4. Major Pentatonic scale. Just the first 2 notes of the major scale, plus the first 3 notes of the 3rd note’s OWN blues scale
D pentatonic: D E + (F# A B)

Andrew

[Dazza]

Early on I memorized the number of sharps in a scale by the following using word association. Each to their own!

G – I think of GET ‘F’&#KED so G has an F#
D – I remembered it has a DUO of two more rude words beginning with ‘F’ and ‘C’
A – Has three sharps as there are three lines to make an A.
E – has four sharps as there are four lines to make an E.
B – In my case my surname starts with a B and there are five kids in the family. 5 Sharps!

Bb – the word BE comes to mind and it contains Bb and Eb.

and so on with a few others.

[Anonymous]

Hi Dazza

Have you recently looked at my table?
I may have over done the info on my table going up to the 7 chord 1,3,5,7 as it seems most only use 1,3,5 or jam with 1,4,5.
I’m only just getting to grips with this theory again after 40 years since I stopped playing the piano!

The way I remember the circle of fifths is : Cb – Gb – Db – Ab – Eb – Bb – F – C – G – D – A – E – B – F# – C#.
Clever Girls Dance At Every Ball For Clothes

Flats = Begin at Cb with 7 flats and ascend to C with no flats.
Sharps = Begin a C with no sharps and ascend to C# with seven sharps.

[Anonymous]

for #’s i use G’ood D’ay A’ustralia E’verybody (loves) F’rying C’hips
for b’s i use F’ive B’E’A’D’s (in a) G’reat C’ircle

theres loads of these on the internet

[Andrew Gibson]

Hi Jeff. One way to improvise that works for me is to focus on a single scale, like Michael suggests on another reply.

I’d create a simple melody in the D minor scale, like:
D E F G A G F E D

In this example, I’d put beats on every 2nd note: D F A F then 4 beats on the final D where the sequence starts again, or whatever you’re comfortable with, to give it a proper musical feel. Sorry I don’t know how to upload an image of the sheet music.

THEN, try to play the same notes with the same melody but notes in a different order and use exactly the same number of notes.

D E F G F E F E D
D F G A G F E F D

Maybe try a different starting note and ending note
A G F E F G F E D
D E F E F G F D E
A G F E D E F G A

But what really helped me was to create a catchy tune out of the sequence, like so.

D……………D
D……………E
D……………A
A……………D

Then, the variations are endless…..and more importantly, fun!

Andrew

[Author]

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