Diatonic Chords in Minor Keys

Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman, and today we're going to revisit the music theory concept of diatonic chords.
But this time we're going to look at how to play diatonic chords in minor keys.
Let's come to the piano to get started.
First a quick review of diatonic.
Remember, diatonic means belonging to a particular key.
For example, all white keys are diatonic to the key of C major.
F-sharp is not diatonic in the key of C, because it just doesn't belong in that key. However, F-sharp is diatonic in the key of G major,
because it's part of that G major scale. All right, now today however we're talking about minor keys,
and every major key has a relative minor with the same number of sharps and flats,
which means it will have the same set of diatonic pitches or keys. So C major's relative of A minor
has the same diatonic family.
All the white keys. A natural minor that is. You could play any white key on the piano, and that key will be diatonic
in A natural minor. Meaning, it belongs in that family of notes or pitches.
Okay, now there are variants to minors, and one variant that we've learned is the harmonic minor.
This is A natural minor, for harmonic we take the seventh note, which is right here, and raise it a half-step.
So if we are in A harmonic minor, G is no longer diatonic.
G-sharp is our diatonic pitch. Okay, so if I played a C-sharp, that's not diatonic in A harmonic minor.
However, E is diatonic.
G-sharp is also diatonic in A harmonic minor.
Now when we play diatonic chords, were simply going through every possible root position triad
that's diatonic to that key.
So let's come back now for a second to A natural minor.
If we're going to play diatonic chords, you can see we're only going to be using white keys.
We'll start with here in A minor root position.
This is an A minor triad. Go ahead and play this with me.
You can use your right hand or left hand doesn't matter. Let's name these chords out loud together. So we're going to say out loud A minor i chord.
Say it with me, go. A minor i chord.
Good, now we move up a step,
and if we move every note in that chord up a step using diatonic pitches only,
then we get to the ii chord.
The ii chord in minor is diminished.
How did I know that? Here's a trick for figuring out if a chord is diminished.
Well, number one you can listen to the sound of it, but you can also tell, let me try to do this:
You can look and see that there are two keys in between these bottom two notes,
and there's two keys in between these two notes.
It so happens if that is the case, it will always be a diminished chord.
That's true anywhere on the piano.
For example, if I played let's say these three notes, this is also a diminished chord because I've got two notes in between, two notes in between.
You can hear that diminished sound.
Pause the video and see if you can find any other diminished chords on the piano.
Again, all you're doing is trying to find three pitches where there's two notes in between, two notes in between.
Pause the video and see if you can find two or three other diminished chords starting on any key on the piano, then press play to go on.
So that was a little diminished tangent there, but let's come back for a diatonic chords. We had our i chord,
we had our B diminished ii chord let's say that together.
Say it with me, go B diminished ii chord,
and we step up again. We're always using white keys, because this is A natural minor, so these are a diatonic keys. Now we're on the III chord,
and what kind of chord is this? What's its name?
Yeah this is the C major chord. So say C major III chord.
Can you name this one for me?
If you said D minor IV chord, you're correct.
This is the E minor v chord. Say that with me. E minor v chord.
Now what do you see here?
If you said F major VI chord, you're correct.
And what about right here?
This is the G major VII chord,
and then we're back to A minor i chord.
Good, so remember the only diminished chord was this ii chord in B minor. Notice this chord
isn't diminished because we've got three notes in between here and two in between there.
Diminished has to have two in between and two in between. If it's three than two, that makes it major.
It so happens that minor is two and three,
or you could just listen to the sound of it.
Okay, now pause the video and on your own I'd like you to go through play and name every single diatonic chord in A minor, then press play to go on.
Now, let's try the same thing using harmonic minor.
So if we're using A harmonic minor, G it's kind of like an, let's call it a forbidden note.
It's made out of lava now, so if you touch it, ah.
Okay, you want to only use G-sharp.
So as we're stepping up, and you're like, oh it's time to play this G, n ...