Borrowing Musical Structures
What are borrows, what can we borrow, and how much can we keep?
Two Tonal Centers at Once
One of the first questions asked between musicians can often be, “What key are you in?” In western music, a “key” is one of twelve notes that typically starts either the Major Scale or the Natural Minor Scale. This allows musicians to know which note to start with and how to space out the remaining notes. Even though we are using two scales, we really only have a limited amount of information because of how interrealted both scales are.
Above we have the C Major Scale and A Natural Minor Scale. Both scales use the same notes and chords. The first difference is that degrees three, six, and seven are natural in the Major Scale and flat in the Natural Minor Scale. The other difference is where the first degree, or Tonic, exists. If we played in C Major and used the note C as the Tonic, then that makes sense because it is the first degree note in the C Major Scale. But if we transition to A as the Tonic note without changing any other notes, then we have transitioned, or modulated, over to the A Natural Minor Scale.
The point of these technicalities between the Major and Natural Minor scales is to show you how closely related they truly are. Think of it like this: if we are playing a Major Scale, then we are also playing a Minor Scale. In the set of notes C, D, E, F, G, A, and B, we have two notes that can be treated as the Tonic: C and A. One note centers our Major Scale tonalities and another note centers our Minor Scale tonalities, but both notes exist and can be the tonal centers at any time.
Basic Borrows
To borrow one or more notes we need to know where to borrow from. Since we already have two interrelated scales that works so well together, we can start in one scale and borrow from the other. While we can start in Natural Minor and borrow from the Major Scale, I’ll stick to using the C Major Scale as our main scale. The scale we borrow from will be C Natural Minor. By not using A Natural Minor we avoid using a “Relative Scale” which uses the same notes. C Major and C Minor scales are “parallel” to eachother because they both start on the same note. As you’ll se below, this gives us three new notes: E♭, A♭, and B♭.
When borrowing we want to keep the Tonic intact. This means that the chord C will be our Tonic and that the chord Cm will not be used. There are ways to use Cm, but that will take us out of the scope of this lesson.
To get a sense for how powerful borrowing can be, let’s start with a free-time progression in C Major of ii, iii, IV, I or Dm, Em, F, C. the first three chords move ascending through the scale. We then end with F moving to C. This IV to I movement at the end is called a Plagal Cadence and it gives that “ah men” feeling found at the end of songs found at Church. The part to focus on is what comes before the Plagal Cadence: ii moving to iii moving to IV. In this sequence we have room for one more note at the ♭III position: E♭. By borrowing E♭ directly from our parallel minor scale we can add extra movement to our progression and get ii, ♭III, iii, IV, I or Dm, E♭, Em, F, C.
The notes in an E♭ chord are E♭, G, and B♭. Using this chord adds chromatic movement to our progression by filling in the gaps of the C Major Scale found between D & E and A & B. Try this progression our and listen for the borrowed notes E♭ and B♭ as they connect our movement. Rather than show this in standard music notation, I have it below gridded off so that anyone can see the flow of the notes. On the left of this chart is the C Major Scale with the lowest tone at the bottom. Each chord is listed from left to right as roman numerals. The notes used in each chord are stacked vertically below the roman numeral. I’ve also highlighted the borrowed notes with circles and the chromatic movements with blue and green lines to show direction and tonal range.
Borrowing by the Numbers
We can also use A♭ and B♭ for chromatic movement, but why not take it to the next level? Sticking with our original progression of ii, iii, IV, I as Dm, Em, F, C we can swap out chords.
Above we have C Major, the parallel minor: C Minor, and the parallel minor’s realtive major: E♭ Major. So how did we get to E♭ Major? Starting with the C Major Scale we are borrowing from C Natural Minor because they both start with the note C. Now, remeber how C Major and A Natural Minor were the same set of notes? C Natural Minor and E♭ Major are also the same set of notes. They are also the same set of chords.
To spice up our original progression, I’ll look to E♭ Major because it is also a Major Scale and borrow from it. Think of it like heads & tails vs apples & oranges. C Major and C Minor are heads & tails because they are the same set of notes. C Major and E♭ Major are different notes, but the same scale. In this way C Major is a round apples and E♭ Major is a round orange. They’re both the same scale/shape, but the flavor changes.
So what do we borrow? First of all, we are keeping C because it is the Tonic. That leaves the ii, iii, and IV chords to play with. In E♭ Major the ii, iii, and IV chords are Fm, Gm, and A♭. Rather than just swap chords and expect you to hear the quality of this type of borrow, try playing the original progression followed by the borrowed progression. This would be Dm, Em, F, C, Fm, Gm, A♭, C. The roman numerals for this would be ii, iii, IV, I, iv, v, ♭VI, I. Another way to hear this would be to play the movement to the Plagal Cadence, the borrowed movement, and then move to Tonic and bypass the Plagal Cadence with Dm, Em, F, Fm, Gm, A♭, C. This climb would be notated as ii, iii, IV, iv, v, ♭VI, I.
When borrowing from the parallel minor’s relative major (using E♭ Major chords to replace C Major chords) it’s important to use the minor third interval as a guide. A “minor third” is a step and a half interval and is the distance fromt he note C to the note E♭. When we used Fm, Gm, and A♭ to replace Dm, Em, and F we used the minor third interval. In other words, the distance from D to F is a minor third, as is the distance from E to G and F to A♭. By replacing Dm, Em, and F with minor and major chords that are a minor third higher in pitch (Fm, Gm, and A♭) we use the ii, iii, and IV chords in C Major and replace them with the ii, iii, and IV chords in E♭ Major.
Can We Borrow Too Much?
As long as the main scale you are working with is treated as what all borrows are anchored to, then the sky is the limit.
This last chart has the C Major Scale as the main scale, with borrows and replacements lined up for visual use. A great pair of take-aways from this chart is that (1) the Parallel Minor Borrows have the same root notes or flattened versions of those notes, but different chords and (2) the Parallel Minor’s Relative Major Replacements have the same roman numerals as the main scale, but different root notes. In this way you have two opposite sets to borrow from. You can borrow either new chord forms or use new root notes to build the same chord forms. The choice is yours.
If you’re looking for music that uses borrowed notes and/or chords, then look at a piece of written music. If you see that the key signature never changes, but notes go sharp, flat, and natural throughout a piece, then there is some type of borrowing going on. Look at the notes that are altered and figure out what degrees they are. If degrees three, six, and seven are commonly flattened in a major key, then the song borrows from the parallel minor. If the song is in a minor key, but degrees three, six, and seven are sharpend, then the borrowing comes from the parallel major. Any other borrows are typcially for the leading tone (seventh degree) in minor keys, a secondary dominant, or the diminished sixth (flattened sixthe degree) in major keys. There are other borrows, but like I said, the sky is the limit. So have fun mixing up your favorite progressions and see where it takes you.
