Hello, and welcome today. We will be looking at an example of how chromatic mediant relationships can Sound by creating an expected harmonies, and also some tips on things you can do with rhythm to surprise your listeners, here is a snippet of the example. We'll be looking at and Jump Right In. Okay, before we go into chromatic medians, we have to understand what a mediant is.
It is basically a third relationship above or below the note, we are using as reference, for instance, if you are in the c, major scale and use Z as a reference pitch, the third above, it is an e and that is its natural mediant. If you go the other way around, The third below C is the A and that is the sub median of see, these relationships, occur with peaches chords and even tonality.
He's in this case, because we are in the c, major tonality the median of C would be an E minor and its immediate would be the a minor chord. But if you change the chord quality of any of these chords, for instance, if you would have an E major instead of E minor, you would be interested. Reducing a chromatic tone to the c, major tonality in this case, it would be the G sharp. That is basically the reason why it is called a chromatic median cord relationship.
You can also go from C to E flat. Major you would still be introducing chromatic tones in the c major tonality and maintain the third relationship between c and e flat. Usually, the court quality is involved in these relationships are maintained. Meaning that if you are Are using a C major chord. Then the following Court could be either an E major or E flat, major and a major or a flat major.
If you want to learn more about this, please follow the links in the description to read more about it in the blog. Now, let me show you what I did. Using mostly chromatic media and relationships. Throughout this music example, I'm starting on the c major tonality and here we have the a minor and F major chords that F would be the submit event of a minor after that, you hear the F sharp minor which is the chromatic sub medians of a minor.
So A little bit of back and forth between natural mediant and chromatics of media. And in this case, there are lots of other examples in this bit like from B flat major, to D, major and then another chromatic. Median between a major to see major that are basically used to return to a minor and returned to the c major tonality. As you can see, this is a nice way of navigating between tonalities as an alternative for using dominant chords or Are substitutes, here's how it sounds.
In another part of the track. I also played around with chromatic median, quad relationships and this time you can hear me going from C sharp to an E major and then go to a c natural, a major, and then return to C sharp. In the last four bars of this section, we still have chromatic median relationships, but not always like in the case of e to a major or in the end when we go from F sharp major to E major.
Here's how it sounds. I was a bit heavy on the chromatic, mediant usage for the purpose of demonstrating how it sounds but you can use this chord relationships. Interspersed in more, common chord progressions like in a 4-5-1 where you can use a chromatic medians to add some and predictability to harmonies like this one. What you heard was see going to f and then a flat which is the chromatic mediant of F that in turn resolves, half step down to
G as a tritone substitute. And finally, G goes back to see. You are not limited to the usage of chromatic mediant relationships, only between chords or four chord
progressions. You can also use it as a way of establishing a relationship between tonalities as is The case in the beginning of the initial section of this track, I started with a minor and E minor chords and then I use a d half diminished and the G minor 7 chord the latter, do not belong to C major, but they do belong to E, flat, major tonality. So there is a chromatic median relationship that was established between c and e flat tonality.
I also use this device to return to a minor at the end of this section, the d flat major sharp 11 court, that hints to the lydian mode comes from the A-flat, major tonality and is a major third apart from the c, major tonality to, which I return to another idea for using third interval relationships, is by applying it to court sequences. Like in this example, where you have an, A and E flat, major chords that are transposed a major third up, giving place to
C sharp and G major chords. Here's how it sounds in context because I was working with chromatic medians and we have lots of modulations going on. I thought about why Have some type of modulation in the temple as well. So my final tip for today is about Rhythm throughout the track. I played around with different measures of Divisions while maintaining the same base Tempo. In this case, 122 BPM, to create the impression of speeding up or
slowing things down a bit. All I did was basically use a 4/4 time signature but instead of having the regular four beats per measure, I would have five. Six or even seven beats per measure in a 4/4 time, signature to imply a change in the tempo. This is different from having a 44 and then switching to a 5-4 time signature because if I maintain the same tempo I will only have an extra beat per measure without feeling any
Tempo changes. This is a nice way to surprise your listeners and introduce some novelty. Here are some examples in context here. The bar is subdivided in five beats and then Goes to seven beats per measure. Now we briefly go from Seven beats to four beats per measure and then use six beats per measure to introduce their triple time, filled in a 4/4 time signature. Then finally move back to a 5-bit, subdivision near the end. This is one of the ways you can
use to create. What is called the metric modulation. There are other ways you can do this by using polyrhythms, but we won't be covering it now. Explore these ideas and try to incorporate them in your songwriting. Check out the links in the description and visit the blog for more detailed explanations about the presented Concepts. I'll leave you with the full track. It's all for now. And until next time, happy composing