Hi all.
Just a quick ask for some assistance / assurance on Roman numeral notation in a specific context please.
I've been asked by a friend to help label his chord sequence in the key of G minor with some chords borrowed from the parallel G major. And for all I'm fairly sure, there's something about the look of one of the chords that is nagging at me.
The progression starts diatonically:
| Gm | Eb | Bb | F | Gm | Cm | Dm | Gm |
| i | VI | III | VII | i | iv | v | i |
Then repeats with some borrowing in bars 2 and 7:
| Gm | Em | Bb | F | Gm | Cm | Am | Gm |
| i | #vi | III | VII | i | iv | ii | i |
It is the Em that I don't feel at ease with. I'm fairly sure it does take the label #vi.
Its root is the minor's 6th note of Eb raised a semitone.
But ... a little doubt exists.
Am I just getting this uneasy feeling because it is not so common for minor chords to be borrowed when composing in a minor key? Which makes it simply unfamiliar rather than incorrect.
Comments
As the chords are borrowed from the parallel major, you could perhaps label it as vi/I? So I’d interpret that as the six of the major one chord. Ditto the Am - ii/I because the ii of Gm is Am7b5.
Another, perhaps more complicated way, could be to label it as the preceding ii of a secondary dominant that isn’t there. As Em is also the ii of D, whose V is A7. So it’s a stretch… but ii/V?
D is the V of G, so as Em is the ii we’d call it two of five. You could insert an A7, so Em7 - A7 - Bb would give:
To be honest, I’ve pickled my own head there with that last one
But, yep, I think #vi is the proper one, functionally speaking anyway. Like if it were in G major and the chord were Eb instead of Em, that’d be bVI instead of vi.
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
Feedback
Thanks viz.
I'm very comfortable labelling major and minor chords coming in to a major key from a parallel minor including flats.
I think it is just the lack of familiarity of borrowing minor chords in to a minor key progression where the sharp is required.
Thanks Jalapeno. It is not the label for Eb that is the issue. It is the Em borrowed from the parallel G major key.
If the progression were considered as in the key of Bb major rather than G minor, the borrowed Em chord would still require a sharp symbol, but would be a #iv rather than a #vi.
Thanks all.
I'm happy to go with #vi and advise my friend of that.
Yep, it’s not very common in minor, and that’s the only sharpened possibility, apart from the #iii which is pretty much not going to happen, and the #vii(dim) which is an inversion of the V (which is itself often borrowed from major)
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
If memory serves, I was always taught that any non diatonic minor chord should be viewed as a ii because of the high likelihood of it moving to it’s V. As I said, it’s a stretch