These are some of the most beautiful, most played chords of all time. It's a 1-4-5 in the key of C. Countless compositions, tunes, and songs use these timeless chords. They sound great, they really do. But, I noticed something a while ago.
I noticed that not all of my favorite songs sound like this. A lot of my favorite songs, the songs that I go back to again and again, the songs that have made an emotional impact on me, they don't sound like this. They have something else going on.
They sound more like this. So good. These are chords that mix major and minor, dark and light, joy and sorrow.
These are the songs that hit me like a freight train. In this video we're going deep on maybe the most useful tool for composing impactful chord progressions, modal interchange. I'll show you some of the most iconic examples of modal interchange in music history and how composers and songwriters use this device to create a mood that literally goes beyond words. Most importantly we'll take a deep dive into Cush chords, giving us a fresh way to practice modal interchange.
This transforms simple chord progressions that you already play into the lush beautiful progressions of your dreams. Let's get started. So the basics for modal interchange are actually quite simple if you know about modes.
If you know that the chords in the key of C major are C, D minor, E minor, F, G, A minor, B diminished, and C, and you know that the chords for a C Natural minor, like a C Aeolian are C minor, D minor, E flat major, F minor, G minor, A flat major, and B flat major. If you know all that, you can simply mix those two sounds together, right? So we have here, instead of seven choices to make a chord progression, you've got 14 choices. to make a chord progression. Let's check out some examples of amazing musicians using these two C major and C minor together and mixing them together.
We'll start with Narlos Barkley. So this is very much C minor. The 1 to the 3 Eb to the 6 Ab major. And then a G major chord G flat.
on the chord. C minor. E flat major. 3 chord. A flat 6 chord.
And then our 5 chord. A sus. Still in C minor here.
Right C natural minor. It's all good, but this is great. C major.
To A flat major, that's the sixth chord of C minor. To E flat, that's the three chord. So that one C major, that one time, is insanely impactful.
It's so crazy. impactful. I realize the language I'm using around this song, but it really makes a huge difference. That's the power of modal interchange.
Oh hey there. If you truly want to unlock the power of modal interchange go to CushChords.com to download our beautiful PDF workbook. Let's get back to it. Let's check out an example on the polar opposite end of the spectrum but it's equally if not more impactful.
This is from a famous French composer In America we pronounce it Clow-de-bussy, and I know French people love that. This is Claire de Lune, key of D-flat major, and this is the most impactful part of this piece, in my opinion. Five chord, A-flat, seven. And then you have the one and the three and then what is that? I'm sorry what was that third chord again?
So we have you have a D flat major you have an F minor the three chord in the key of D flat and then you have this E major over G sharp also known in the score as F flat over A flat because we're in the key of D flat. That, my friends, is borrowed, of course, from the key of D flat minor, that D flat Aeolian. And it does it again.
Debussy does it again and keeps going with it until eventually Debussy will completely modulate to the key of E from here. And it's absolutely weird. If you go back and you watch YouTube videos of this song, this moment is always the most watched by far. The peak.
of viewing because I think people's heartbreak when they hear it. Beautiful. Let's check out another version.
For our last example, Philadelphia is in the house. Hall and Oates. This is, I can't go for that.
No, can do. These guys love them some modal interchange and this is a beautiful example. We're just starting off here.
On our F minor 9 chord, crazy great sounds, setting up the vibe. We go to the key center, C minor. six seven and then from here C major and the whole the clouds part and the sky opens up and you get this beautiful light feeling to everything and yeah we'll just stay here and be happy for the rest of the song yeah No, we can't go for that. Love Sting sometimes, and Modal Interchange tells that story. Okay, let's talk about how to practice this great song.
So how do we use this information? How do we practice this modal mix, these two different modes at once? It's a composition tool more than anything, so it's kind of hard to just say, well, just compose with Modal Interchange, but there are a few games that you can play that kind of help unlock how to use these.
you could literally do an exchange of the chords in the mode. So if we take a basic chord progression in C, two, three, and like a one, a two, a six, and a five. That's C major, D minor, A minor, seven, and G7. It's a pretty standard kind of progression. But I like it because it sounds good and it goes somewhere.
Now what if we, instead of playing this from the Ionian mode, from the C major mode, what if we swapped out the natural minor, the C Aeolian, what would that sound like? Check it out. Everything but C. So the C stays major. Everything else is from that C minor, that C Aeolian.
Alright, so we still have the 1 in major, but the 2 is from C Aeolian. The 6, A flat major. The 5, G minor, right?
C major. D minor, 7 flat 5. A flat major. Let's go back to the C major.
Check out the Aeolian again. So you can hear this is just it has a little bit more tension right it's not so saccharine-y. Again back to C major this is very bright everything feels kind of bouncy and happy. Same beat though Aeolian.
That A flatness that we're getting there it makes everything just a hair darker. Okay let's go back to the major here's our original chord progression. Again, everything inside.
One more time. What if we swapped it out for the C Phrygian, right? That third mode of A-flat major.
Check it out. D-flat major is the 2, A-flat is of course the 6, and the 5 is a G-flat, sorry, G minor 7 flat 5. The new note here is that D flat. Let's go back to our original from C major.
Alright, 1, 2... C Phrygian. Again, 1, 2, 6, 5. The 1 is always major for our purposes here today. Alright, back to the major.
Is that something? What if we did C Dorian? Take our C major progression here and we did a C Dorian.
Let's see how that would sound. Here we go. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Our 1 is always going to be the C major.
The 2 is D minor. The 6 is A minor 7 flat 5 and the 5 is G minor. This is borrowed from the key of B flat major.
So all of these chords besides the C major and the tonic are from that key of B flat major. But notice that all of the roots are the same, right? It's a C, a D, and an A, and a G. Let's go back to the major.
Even when we were doing like the Phrygian or the Aeolian and it was like an A flat, it's still an A, right? Keep it going guys. It's still an A, right?
It's still the same root movement. Okay, so just using parallel modes here. is a great way to practice taking a standard fairly like pedestrian chord progression 1-2-6-5 and adding these tensions to it right? I mean just having that A flat in the mix all of a sudden it opens up the harmonic color palette of the entire progression and you can you can really tweak that. Not every not every chord has to be from the same mode you can just pull chords from different modes of that parallel C, right?
So you've got the Ionian, you've got the C Dorian, you've got the C Phrygian, you have the C Lydian, the C Mixolydian, C Aeolian, and the C Locrian. Those are all the modes of a C major scale, right? And so you can parallel any of those with a chord progression in C major, and it's going to sound pretty cool. Some are going to sound better than others. Now, this is fine.
This is a great way to do it. There's a way that I love even more. It's a game we've developed here at OpenStudio that we call the Cush Chord game.
And I'll talk about why we call it Cush Chords at the very end. It's the same principle. So we're going to do the same three different scales.
The C Aeolian, the C Phrygian, and the C Dorian. But instead of thinking about them as parallel C minor scales to C major, we're going to think about them from their parent key. So C Aeolian, right, is the sixth mode of E flat major, right?
That C natural minor. That's the relative minor in the key of E flat. There's an E flat, an A flat, and a B flat.
Right? That C aeolian is just the E flat major scale C to C, right? So I like to think about what if we took parallel major keys? So the key of C major and the key of E flat major, and we kept the C the same, but we use the same chord progression and moved everything but the C up to E flat major.
So this isn't the same as using the parallel minor, right? If we did that, our 1, 2, 6, 5 in C, we move everything but C up to E-flat major. Well, the 2 chord in the key of E-flat is not D-minor 7-flat 5, it's F-minor 7, right? And the 6 chord is not A-flat major like it is with a C aeolian, it's C-minor, right?
That's the 6 chord in the key of E-flat. And the 5 chord is a B-flat 7. So let's hear how our original chord progression sounds in the major again just to get in our ears and let's hear that E flat cush chord version. Two, three.
All right here's the cush chord. Again with the cush chords. All of these chords, except for again this first tonic chord, they're from that C Aeolian, right? But we're thinking about it differently.
We think about using the same Roman numerals from E flat major. It gets us a different chord progression. And what I love about it is it keeps the structure of the original chord progression together, but it just changes the key on us. There's something really magical about this.
There's a reason that the Cush chord videos I've done here on YouTube are my most popular videos. This is so fun. Let's go back to our original major.
One, two. Let's try it with our Phrygian Cush chords, right? So we'll use from the key of A-flat. second page 1, 2 in the key of A flat, 6 in the key of A flat, 5 in the key of A flat. How great is that?
Do our original. That's dangerous. We could play that all day, honestly.
That could have been 10 minutes long, but you just heard it because it's so inspiring. And finally, we can try using our C Dorian, but instead of thinking about it as the parallel C minor chord, we think about it from the parent key of B flat and see what that does. Just the same degree, the same Roman neutrals, but shifting everything but the tonic C to B flat.
Let's try it. Here we go. Something kind of magical about that.
Again, it's one and then two in the key of Bb, which is Cm6 and V. Isn't that funny? Back to the original. That's the Cush chord game.
You can do that with any chord progression. Let's go back to our our Phrygian one. I know that felt really good.
So we're gonna go back to the Phrygian Cush Chord here. Key of A flat. Everything but C goes to the key of A flat. It's just a nice place to end it. And we can talk about why we call them Cush Chords.
Truth is, we just made it up. We were just sitting around here talking about what would be a good name for this game. Because it is a game. And someone mentioned the kushkors.
What if we called it the kushkor games? It feels like a very mellow sound. And so we went with it. And it's a good lesson because, you know, like all names, it's completely made up out of thin air. Yeah, bub.
Thank you for joining me here today. Put in the comments what your favorite Cush chord game is. A progression that you think sounds good taking through different keys. Give it up for Caleb Kirby on the drums.
Bob DiPolo on the bass. My name's Adam Maness. Happy practicing.