The Music Building Lesson by Kirk

The Music Building.

Even though music is something you listen to and hear, I have always 
looked for ways of picturing it visually, both for my own understanding 
and as a way to teach. Below is an analogy which may help some of you 
get a grip on how music connects up.
 
I have in previous articles stressed how important it is to know your keys. 
By that, I mean know which chords belong in each family, or key. I guess 
that’s the first analogy right there. I picture a "key" as being a family of 
chords which have arisen out of the major scale. Seven notes, the scale, 
give rise to seven chords, the key. These seven chords are built simply 
by picking three alternate notes from the seven. Seven starting notes
 -- seven chords.  

OK. That's pretty straight-forward.
 
Now picture this -- and I've used this analogy in a previous article, but only 
briefly -- imagine the seven chords as being rooms in an apartment, or "flat" 
as they say in the UK. Let's say we're in the key of, for simplicity sake, C. It's
nice and uncluttered, with no sharps or flats to cloud the issue.
 
The scale reads C D E F G A B ... Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti. 
The chords which arise out of that scale are: C, D minor, E minor, F, G, A minor, 
and B half diminished (and back to C).
 
Let’s say that our C chord, the "One Chord", the main chord, is our living room. 
Then we could imagine the other major chords, F and G (the Four and Five chords), 
as being other important rooms. Let’s call F and G the bedrooms. Then there are 
three minor chords. We can say that Am, the relative minor, the Six chord, is the 
kitchen. That leaves two more minors, the Two and Three chords. Let’s call them 
the study and the laundry. One more, the Seven chord, that half-diminished, we'll 
call the bathroom. Don't let it scare you. It rarely comes up.
 
So there it is. Each room (chord) has a specific function. All rooms connect and are 
laid out in a fixed way.
 
That's one key.
 
Al