Minor-key songs

The key names one note, calls it 1, and counts the major scale up from there. Reading a chart covers that. It does not say major or minor.

So the numbers never change their meaning. A 3 is always the major third of the key, and a minor third is always ♭3, with the flat written in. If a chart could switch to counting up a minor scale, the same digit would mean a different note depending on a flag at the top of the page. Such a chart can no longer be searched by its progression, or read against another chart of the same song.

The only question, then, is where to put the 1. There are two good answers, and both are major keys.

Every minor key shares its notes with the major key three semitones up: A minor with C, E minor with G, D minor with F. Chart the song from that major key and every chord of the minor scale is already in it. The home chord is the 6m. Nothing needs a flat.

This is what most Nashville charts do, and it is the default in NNScharts. A chart that opens on the 6m and keeps returning to it is a chart of a minor song, and the 6m is how it says so. Nothing else marks it, the same as on paper.

There is a practical reason behind the default. One song in the library can have several charts, and two written from the same center can be read against each other bar for bar; two written from different centers cannot. Sending every minor song to its relative major keeps one song’s charts comparable. It is also what the iReal importer does when it meets a minor key: it charts from the relative major and tells you it did.

The other answer centers the chart on the minor tonic itself. A minor becomes a chart in A, which is A major because there is no other kind, and the chords of the minor scale get their flats written in. The home chord is the 1m; the ♭3, ♭6 and ♭7 are the price of putting it there.

It is the same music, and a player reads either without pausing. The parallel version says “this song is minor” on its face, with a 1m in the first bar; the relative version says it with the 6m.

Most minor songs do not stay inside the natural minor scale. The chord that leads back to the tonic is usually major, E rather than Em in A minor, and it borrows one note the relative major does not have. That still needs no sharp or flat on the chart. The root, E, is the third degree of C, so the number is 3. What changed is the quality, and the chart says so by leaving the m off.

The number says where the root is; whatever follows it says what is built there. That division is why a chord from outside the scale can be written without any argument about which scale it belongs to, and it is the whole subject of Chord qualities and slash chords.

From the parallel major the same chord is a plain 5 — which is, after all, what it is. That is the trade in one chord. Center on the minor tonic when:

• The band hears the minor tonic as home and calls it “one” on the floor.
• The song lives on the minor tonic and its dominant the whole way through. From the relative major that is 6m and 3 in every bar; from the parallel major it is 1m and 5, which is what it sounds like.
• The chart you were handed is already written that way, and matching it on the stand matters more tonight than matching the library.

The key control asks one question: where does 1 live? There is no major or minor switch, because there is nothing for one to change. Pick C and write the 6m, or pick A and write the 1m and the flats. Transposing later changes the key at the top and nothing else — the numbers stay where they are, whichever way the chart was written. The rest of the system is on the overview page.