Relative Major and the Remix

Recently my brother and I did a remix for local artist Brett (composed of members from The Dance Party). A lot of people have asked me how we came up with the chords we used in the intro.  Here's the original:



The track quickly establishes itself in the key of E major with the bassline wandering back and forth between E and G# and the lead guitar proclaiming a high E straight through the intro.  The mood is dancy and upbeat.  A major key is constructed by starting on the tonic note and ascending in the patter W,W,H,W,W,W,H (where W represents a whole step and H represents a half step).  So starting this pattern on E results is the E-major scale: E,F#,G#,A,B,C#,D#,E.


Seeking to reinvent the emotive content of the song, my brother I and went beyond just changing timbre, tempo, or style; instead, we manipulated the harmonic structure itself so that the exact same vocals heard in the original would take on new meaning against the backdrop of a different tonality (as I will explain).



I have been told that the result seems darker than the original.  That makes sense because we used the "relative minor" key: C#minor.  C#minor has the honored distinction of having its own Wikipedia page dedicated to its relationship with Beethoven.

What is a relative minor key?

A relative minor uses the exact same notes as its relative major partner, but begins a step and a half lower thus forming the pattern W,H,W,W,H,W,W - or - C#,D#,E,F#,G#,A,B,C#.  We used the chord progression: C#m, F#m, AbM, Am, C#m, F#m, AbM, C#m. Since our key uses all of the same notes as that of the original, the same vocal melody works with both versions but to a strikingly different emotive effect.

Your homework is to take a happy pop song you like and convert it into its relative minor key on an instrument!

If you liked the remix check out Rex's other stuff and hit up my soundcloud.

Classical Picks: Rachmaninoff's Bells of Moscow and Samuel Barber's violin concerto.