I just have to get this really dumb question of my chest. How do you actually say "I", "IV", and "V7"? Just to make sure: I mean the words that you say if you refer to them.

I say "one","four", and "five seven". Dependind on the conversation I may say "chord" after each one, but if we're talking about chords I just say the number.

Cathy

^ What jotur said.

Can you imagine having to say "supertonic-dominant-tonic" everytime you meant ii-V-I? I'll stick with "two-five-one".

Same as Cathy said, except occasionally I will also say "Vee-Seven" for the five-seven. Don't know if anyone else does this, but I do.

Many thanks! It sounds like an idiotic question but my books don't comment on it and neither does Wikipedia. So as far as I am concerned, it could have been "Roman one" or "first" or so. Cheers, Oliver.

The V7 may say "dominant seventh".

Didn't seem idiotic to me I don't know how many times I've stumbled trying to pronounce a word that I've read but have never heard, and haven't looked up the pronunciation for. More than once, for sure.

Cathy

No foul,tlh1. The old maxim is still true: the only stupid question is the one not asked.

I had the same question: http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/1748540/1.html

Okay I am defeated. I admit it was a valid question but now I have to feel bad about not finding JohnnyD's thread.

Ah, well...as long as you want to have "theory guilt", how about this:

There are three major keys that do not have parallel minor keys...which and why?

LOL!!

OK, JPD... now you've got me scratching my head. What's the answer to your riddle?

(if you don't want to give it away here, you can PM me)

legal, did you fix IE? and if so what was the problem?

Hey, Rossy. Thanks for remembering.

Unfortunately, no. I'm on Firefox at the moment and my IE has the tech guys completely stumped.

For a while, Firefox wouldn't work either, but one of the techs took remote control of my computer, downloaded a whole bunch of stuff, and after much to-do, finally got Firefox to work.

But my IE is still a mess and they have no idea why. Tried resetting everything... uninstalled IE8 to go back to IE7, didn't help... etc.

My web browser suggests Db, Gb, and Cb. Correct or not, I will have to read up on it tonight. I believe that I've never encountered the term "parallel minor" before (I'm still struggling with "relative minors"). The circle of the fifths continues to remind me of some complicated high-energy physics. Didn't CERN recently discover the Bb minor particle?

Cb, Gb, Db. Unless you want to use double flats, you have to give the parallel minor keys their enharmonic names: b, f#, c#.

You could equally say, going to the other end of the cycle of fifths, that there are three minor keys that don't have relative major keys; without enharmonic names the putative relative major keys would have to use double sharps.

I seem to recall someone saying on these boards that they've seen this use of double flats, for example to indicate a modulation from Db major to the shared-name Db minor rather than the enharmonically-named C# minor.

[cross-posted with th1]

I was afraid the answer was going to be something like that (but hoping not).

Those keys, of course, do have relative minors (you can either call them by their enharmonic names or you can use double-flats). If you want to play that game, you could also say that B-sharp has no relative minor, nor does E-sharp. Of Course, they do.

th1, as you know a relative minor is a minor key that shares a key signature with a given major key.

A parallel minor shares the same starting note with a given major key.

For example, the relative minor to C major is A minor, which has no sharps or flats in its key signature. The parallel minor to C major is C minor, which, as it turns out, has three flats in its key signature.

Gold stars all around!!

Good answers while I was pm-ing LB!!!