- Hi and welcome to another
of our little series
of videos focused on
the area of modulation.
So if you were a Baroque
or a Classical composer
you would start your piece in a key
and you'd modulate somewhere safe.
In other words a nearby key.
So you're in C major
you might go to G major,
add one sharp.
You might go to F major by adding A-flat.
You might go to the relative minor,
A minor.
But you probably wouldn't
go too far out of that zone.
There are Baroque pieces that
actually do explore something
a bit more adventurous than that
but that's kind of basically
the world in which they lived.
And of course as time and a half goes by,
composers start to be a
little bit more adventurous
about getting from one key to the next.
But for quite a long time
if you wanted to go from this
key to a key somewhere away
you'd have to go through
some of the intervening keys
to get there.
And you'd have to use these
things called pivot chords.
In other words,
I'm going from this key to that key
and I need to find which chords
are in both this key and that key,
so I can use one or more
of those pivot chords
to make the journey.
But as we went on,
particularly by the time we
got into the 19th century,
composers were getting interested
in using chromatic chords a bit more.
One of these is the augmented sixth chord
and I'm going to talk today
about the German sixth in particular.
And we're just going to explore
how it might be useful
in terms of modulation
by a different kind of technique.
So first of all let's
just be crystal clear
what we mean by a German sixth chord.
And if you're not sure
about augmented sixth chords
we've got another video
out there on YouTube
that explains all this.
Basically to form this chord
you're in C major.
May not look like it
because you're looking at A-flat,
E-flat, F-sharp, thinking,
"What's that got to do with C major?"
but hold on to your hats.
We're definitely in C major.
When you want to make a German sixth,
the first thing you do is
you find the minor sixth above the tonic.
So the tonic's C,
minor sixth above that is A-flat.
Or you could think of it
as the sixth degree of the
scale lowered by a semitone.
Doesn't matter.
Same result.
A-flat.
You then find an augmented
sixth above that note.
So A-flat augmented sixth above it,
F-sharp.
You then put the tonic in the middle
so that's what C is doing there.
And if you want to make this German sixth
you add a perfect fifth above
the bottom of the chord.
So perfect fifth above A-flat is E-flat.
So there's the chord.
Sounds like something else
but it's a German sixth in the key of C.
So I'm tiddling along in C major.
And then I think I need
something a bit exciting
so I use a German sixth.
Rather nice isn't it?
And when I use a German sixth
I can either follow it with V
or Ic-V.
Like Ic-V-I.
It's nice approach to
that cadence, isn't it?
Do you see how it adds a bit of colour?
So that's me using the German sixth
as it's meant to be as a chromatic chord
in the key of C major
by constructing it as I explained and just
by slipping it in before a V
or a Ic-V progression to add to colour.
One thing you can do with this though
is that you can make a little
enharmonic alteration to
it, so you might arrive on
this chord in C major
but then you might say,
"Well, what happens if I rename
one of these notes?"
So I'm keeping these three
and instead of F-sharp at the top,
I'm going to call it G-flat.
So it's going to sound the same, isn't it?
But be clear about this,
if it's a German sixth
in the key of C major or C minor,
it must look like this,
A-flat, C, E-flat, F-sharp.
But what I'm saying is that you
could get a little bit
inventive with this and say,
"Well, if I change the F-sharp
to G-flat what happens to this chord?"
Well suddenly what was
a German sixth in the key of C becomes
a dominant seventh in the key of D-flat.
So if you want to modulate from C
to D-flat major,
well at first sight that looks
a bit difficult doesn't it?
Because C's got no flats, no sharps.
D-flat major's got five flats,
so how'd you get there?
Well you could think,
"I'll have a little journey,
"I'll start in C major,
"I'll go to F major,
I'll go to B flat major,
"I'll go to E-flat major,
I'll go to A-flat major,
"then I'll go to D-flat major."
You'll get there sometime
this side of Christmas,
but if you want to get there quickly,
here's a little trick.
So I'm tiddling along in C major.
Then I've decided to use my German sixth.
Which normally I'm going to go Ic-V-I.
But this time,
I'm using my German sixth
and I'm renaming the F-sharp to G-flat
and I'm then going to
go into D-flat major.
Did you see how I did that?
My goodness we've just moved from
a key with no flats to
a key with five flats
just by using this chord,
the German sixth, and then renaming one
of the notes enharmonically.
So you see how this
can be used as it's meant to be used,
as a chromatic chord,
but it also opens up new doors
for the possibilities of modulation,
and it enables you to move
five flats away from where you are
in one gentle move.
So quite an interesting little trick
that you can work on
using the German sixth,
So happy modulating.
