Key changes are often used in songwriting to mix up the sound and feeling from one section to the next. One common approach is to move between relative minor and major. For example, we could use a minor key for a verse and its relative major for the chorus.

Verse and Chorus

Let’s look at a verse in E minor that repeats the following progression. Each chord is played over one bar (four beats):

For the chorus, we could then move to the relative major. If you haven’t yet learned about relative majors and minors, the relative major is three semitones and two letter names up. That means the relative major of E minor is G major. (Check out Waay’s “Melodies” course to learn more.) We could then start the chorus progression with a G, and it might sound like this:

Bringing It Together

If you play those two sections together—say, a couple lines of the verse, a couple lines of the chorus, and then back again—the chords all come together nicely:

That sounds pretty good, but I think we could smooth out the verse-to-chorus transition (Am to G) and the chorus-to-verse transition (C to Em). I’ve highlighted these transitions above.

Climbing down the Circle of Fifths

Let’s improve those two transitions using a special feature of the circle of fifths: moving down a fifth resolves tension. So if we want to lead into the chorus’s opening G with a bit more intention, we could start a fifth above it and use a D chord. And to come back to the verse’s Em more smoothly, we could do the same thing: start a fifth above (that’s Bm). Here’s what those changes sound like:

Both those changes sound like an improvement to me, but there’s actually another neat tool we can try out. We can strengthen that second “resolution” sound (Bm to Em) by using a V to i transition instead of a v to i transition. In other words, use a B major chord instead of a B minor. This will take us away from our key (G major / E natural minor) for a moment, but that extra tension means extra resolution when we “return home” to E minor in our verse.

Climbing up from Seven

Another option we could choose for our transitions is the “seven chord” of the upcoming key. Our chorus is in G major, so we could lead into it with the vii° chord, which would be F♯°. Our verses are in E minor, so we could use the VII chord (D) for that transition. (Check out Waay‘s “Chords” & “Progressions I & II” courses to learn all about roman numeral notation!) Let’s hear how those changes sound:

Using these chords creates some nice tension—especially that diminished chord. But it also leads into the next chord from below, effectively climbing up the chord scale to get there.

Over to You

Which is your favourite version of the progression? Or maybe you have some questions? Let me know in the comments below. Want to learn more about progressions? Check out the “Progressions I & II” courses in Waay.