Quote:
Take a song like Summertime, key of Am. Finally, when it goes to the CMaj (on so "hush" ...), that to me is going to the I chord which makes more sense than it going to the bIII chord.


Peter,

In relation to the above, I did not learn it that way. For me, maybe it's an Australian thing, III in minor is always a major chord (e.g. F in key D minor) just like III in major is always a minor chord (Am in key F major).

This means that if I wrote the progression...

  • I VI II7 V7

.... in D minor, it tells me to play Dm-Bb-Em7b5-A7.

I was at a seminar a few years ago with an Assoc. Professor from Berklee who spoke about things like bIII chord. He used it to mean "the chord built on the flattened third of the parallel major scale". That was the first time I'd come across this terminology used in this way. To me, a bIII chord is an Eb variation (in C major) or Cb variation (in A minor).

I'm probably just set in my ways but, to this day, the above use of bIII doesn't seem like the most common practice in harmony because I haven't encountered it since that seminar. At the time of the seminar, I found myself wondering if such a technique was a way of trying to make sense of minor harmony from a major-key perspective and introduced to the world as an invention from Berklee. I never investigated it to find out.

In Walter Piston's book "Harmony", that many consider to be one of the world's leading authorities in tonal harmony, no reference is made to chords such as bIII from the above viewpoint.

  • By way of explanation, Piston was a professor of music at Harvard up until 1960. His book is one of the best reference books I've ever read. I continually return to it for understanding harmonic progressions.

Below is from "Harmony" (a revised edition and expanded by Mark DeVoto, 8th impression 1994). When chords in minor are first introduced, Piston/DeVoto use C minor as the reference and they explore the different possibilities given the harmonic and ascending/descending melodic minor variations.




Given the global population of these forums, it would be interesting to hear how different musical cultures around the world talk about minor keys from a harmonic perspective. There seems to be some variation with this. Fortunately, most seem to agree on harmony from a major perspective.

Regards,
Noel

MY SONGS...
Audiophile BIAB 2025