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Brian, I'm trying to understand the word "parallel". I know that for scales, where we say "relative major" (A minor, C major) and "tonic major" (A minor, C major), in the US you say "parallel major" instead of "tonic major". So is that what you mean by "parallel mode"?

Well modern modes are not like Renaissance modes - it's a different musical system. The solfege (movable do) itself is kind of a bastardization too that doesn't quite fit the old system of music, nor the new one, so I tend to agree with you. In the RCM theory when it came to modes, they actually taught two systems for writing them out - I didn't know what to think about that.


I don't think we had that. If you mean the Bb chord in the key of G minor, that is a major chord (Bb D F). That's the one you called bIII and I would have called III in the system I first learned.

The only system I know where a minor chord would be called III is a system where you don't distinguish quality and III simply means "3rd degree chord, whatever the quality may be". You're just supposed to know that the 3rd degree of a major key is minor so why write it out? My old Horwood book works that way (written in the 1940's).

It's the opposite of relative. C major is parallel to C minor or C Dorian. Basically, the tonic stays the same and the rest of the scale degrees change with the new scale.


No, sorry, I meant a B chord in G minor. I meant to say "in a world where III means a flatted third, what would you call the unflatted third chord?". See the system you are mentioning doesn't take into consideration that there may be chord roots that aren't native to the natural scale.

I'm starting to think we might be boring the rest of the board with this discussion.

In Canada we call that the "tonic minor" or "tonic major". "Parallel" is an American term. I didn't know it was also used for modes.



What do you mean by "natural scale"? Do you mean as in "natural minor"? Or are you deciding to consider the major scale as being the "natural" scale, and all other scales to be offshoots of that scale?

This is what I meant previously when I wrote of contexts and systems. There are many ways of seeing music, and we create systems around that. But other people may not be sharing those systems, so it has to be defined.

That's interesting. I didn't know that.


Ok, so in the key of G minor, Bb major is the III in the system you've mentioned, correct? Bb is the natural scale tone in that key. So, in that system, what would you call a B major chord? As we discussed before, I have 2 names for both those chords, III and bIII. It's been a while since I've done roman numeral analysis, so I'm not sure there is a method for chords that don't start on scale tones. I'm guessing this system may not account for really complex chord changes.

Anyone from other parts of the world like to jump in and tell us how you notate chords?