You just can’t trust online information

HomespunEffects said:
Thanks. I do get the traditional way (at least tangentially) but I’ve just always hated the capital and lowercase Roman numerals. I’ve found this to be expedient, convenient and less ambiguous.

I did not and still do not understand identifying a key when it differs from a scale. I know borrowed cords breaks the scale but I’m not sure I get why that matters when it’s all conveyed in a practical way. It all feels like a difference in philosophy more than someone is wrong or right.
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As for upper/lower case that's a rather German thing. That said it's pretty much all the place with the naming conventions from i7 to i-7 to I-7 to Im7 etc.
Personally I don't care if it's Roman or Arabic numerals.

As for the key differeing from scale. Sascha explained that well.

I'll add this, borrowed chords don't break anything. You're putting the horse after the carriage so to say.

I had asked if you understand function but it seems a refresh is in order.

Your first level of harmony is the I IV and V
Chord take a children or Xmas tune and just about anyone being told the key will place those 3 chords in about the same spot.

The next step is diatonic harmony, with substitution by function.
A chord in progression has a function that's either home or away.
The tonic and it's subs are home, like you sitting on the couch chilling.
The subdominant chords are somewhat ambiguous. Let's view them as get off my ass and get a drink from the fridge.
Those are the subdominant chords.

You open the fridge no beer in it oh shit...tension...the dominant chird
I have to sit down to recover from this shock. Home...tonic

Ok I want a drink, I'll go to the bar. Subdominant,
I drank too much starting a fight dominant gotta go home and crash tonic..

Now for your diatonic harmony as you view things this groups are

Tonic
I△7 Ⅵ-7 Ⅲ-7
C△7 A-7 E-7

Subdominant
Ⅱ-7 Ⅳ△7
D-7 F△7

Dominant
Ⅴ7 Ⅶø7
G7 Bø

Their function related to key stems from the tonic chords not having the harmonic leading tone the 4 F in the key of C
The note that needs to resolve much more than the melodic leading tone B the♮7.

Inverseley the subdominant chords contain that keys 4th
As in Dm and F both contain F .

The dominant ones contain that as well as the leading tone.

You can have subdominant chords stand in for dominant all day long.
You might as well add B♭△7 to the subdominant ones since it can be heard very much as a F6 sub.

Then if you look at the subdominant minor
Ⅳ-7 ♭Ⅶ7 ♭Ⅵ△7 ♭Ⅱ△7
F-7 B♭7 A♭△7 D♭△7
Youre starting to get a pool of chords that will break the parent scale but still have the same function. And again they contain that harmonic leading tone.

Now if you wanna add another level you take those up another ♭3. I’d explain why but doubt anyone cares.
That gives you
♭Ⅵ-7 ♭Ⅱ7 Ⅶ△7 Ⅲ△7
A♭-7 D♭7 B△7 E△7

Does all have the melodic leading tone with the exception of D♭7 the Tritone sub which has both.

This is before adding secondary dominants, modal interchange, passing chords etc.

TL:DR

This is a tune in Fm look at some of the more obvious chord options. The tune will never not be Fm because of chords.

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Sascha Franck said:
That's completely irrelevant. I mean, you seem to understand everything what I'm saying (or Ed, or Chocol8 or whomever for that matter). And I promise, it's not that we're posting these things because we are oh-so-clever (well, I actually am, hrrrhrrr...) or because we came up with something on our own, but simply because they're common practice. And while some of that is quite questionable, it's still "grown historically" and a fundamental part of the big musical catalog.
Just as, say, typical magnetic pickups are an integral, incredibly well established part of electric guitars. Even with all their shortcomings, they're basically all the same and pretty much noone would have the idea to replace them with piezos. Sure, not exactly comparable, but you may catch my drift.

Add to this that your "system" could easily fit into the rather traditional "official" way of dealing with analysis and what not.
I mean, let's stick with your "We Are Family is in D" statement. It's not even completely wrong (at least for the verse part). The only "offensive" thing being the POV. The "calibration", if you will. Once you accept that tonal centers are a very important thing in any musical analysis (at least as long as we're not heading towards some more extreme, experimental things), it'd only take a tiny bit of "recalibration" to make the things you've obviously thought about fit.
You can of course still choose to ignore all of that, but as said before, as soon as you try to communicate with some other musicians, it's possibly a decent idea to use one common language - including the conventions of that language.
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Ok. I think I understand what you mean.

See, growing up, I was a huge Randy Rhoads fan. To the point where I wouldn’t even entertain listening to a song by Van Halen because of the favorite guitar player rivalries. He talked about modes in an article and I went to the library and took notes. Modes were everything. D Dorian was still C Major though. Not only that, it opened up the entire fretboard by practicing them in order.

No matter what the mode, I could always relate it to the major scale and move it anywhere.

This is the basis of the issue here. I’ve always “seen” the fretboard as a shifting pattern of all the modes by homing in on ionian.

This system is just an extension of that. If you write 2- 5 6- is obvious that we’re in Dorian and it makes more sense than writing 1- 4 5- because 1 and 5 are major. I mean I’d be able to play it that way but the reason I’d done it the other way is so that it matches the patterns in my head that are pretty much ingrained. Plus there’s no deviations from my apparently made up norm. In my mind it’s less work and less calculation. It’s just math not a feel and tonal center is unnecessary information in this case.

I see how my way breaks tradition. I just didn’t realize it because it makes more sense to me. And if you tell me to play a 6- in C I can see the pattern I don’t even call it A minor, it’s just 6- in C.
 
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HomespunEffects said:
No matter what the mode, I could always relate it to the major scale and move it anywhere.

This is the basis of the issue here. I’ve always “seen” the fretboard as a shifting pattern of all the modes by homing in on ionian.
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See, nothing wrong with that.
And it's precisely why I distinguish between the technical and musical aspects.

Also, it's in fact the same thing with modes on their own.
When you have, say, G dorian, it's obviously using the same notes as F major (ionian). Great, because the very same fretboard layout that you've already learned with major scales is still the same.
But once you actually start playing over, say, a simple Gmin7 vamp, you need to adjust your playing to relate to Gmin7 rather than to F. In that very moment, the Gmin7 chord becomes the tonal center, hence the tonic functionally.

On a sidenote: It's actually a great idea not to practice all modes of one major scale but all modes of one root. Especially when you play them kinda one after another, it'll give you a distinct feel of the certain characteristics of each mode.
So, instead of playing F ionian, G dorian, A phrygian and so on, I highly recommend playing G dorian vs., say G ionian. And then mixolydian. And if you are willing to accept a little additional technical challenge, you'd stick within roughly the same fretboard position.

HomespunEffects said:
If you write 2- 5 6- is obvious that we’re in Dorian and it makes more sense than writing 1- 4 5- because 1 and 5 are major.
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A) No, it's not obvious we're in dorian. In jazzier context there might be longer passages of a II-V progression until they finally resolve into a I chord. That very resolving movement will make anything sound like the I chord is the tonic.

B) No, I and V aren't major. It absolutely depends on a whole lot of factors. There's major and minor keys and then there's all sorts of deviations. Besides, there's several occasions when the chords of a progression in one single key would not use the same parent scale. In fact, that's the case with pretty much any minor progression using a dom7 chord to return to the tonic.
Simple example: Am7, E7. Clearly in the key of Amin. And possibly one of the most bog standard movements ever. There goes your approach in relating the Am to whatever the parent major scale might be - because you'd be hard pressed finding one to also cover the E7. After all, Am7 has a G in it whereas E7 has a G#. Neither aeolian nor dorian nor phrygian would cover that E7. Hence, you will have to step out of major scale territory anyway. And once you've done that, things become a lot easier when you accept the "fact" (because it really is kinda like a fact) that you have to look at that progression as a new entity in A minor - with Amin7 being the tonic and E7 being the dominant chord.
 
If Ed was my theory teacher, he’d be sure to only give me songs in ionian. It would keep his blood pressure down. 😂

Could you explain why the 3 chord is considered a Tonic?
 
Sascha Franck said:
So, what if there's an E7 following? Or an F7? Or a Bb7? None of them are covered by C major.
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It doesn’t have to be covered by it. E7 is just a secondary dominant going to A minor (5of6-). F7 is probably a tritone substitution going to E minor (♭2⁷of3-) and Bb7 (♭7⁷) is a backdoor dominant.


was that a test? 😂
 
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HomespunEffects said:
If Ed was my theory teacher, he’d be sure to only give me songs in ionian. It would keep his blood pressure down. 😂

Could you explain why the 3 chord is considered a Tonic?
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Extent the triad… c cegb now take the root away egb E-
Do it the other way around aceg toss the top note Am.

That said III- can do double duty as a sorta stand in for V. Em7=G6
Even more as E7susb9=G13

Why are those three chords tonic? Because the keys 4th does not sound consonant and wants to resolve to the keys 3rd e.
 
HomespunEffects said:
E7 is just a secondary dominant going to A minor (5of6-)
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No, it's the V for Amin (which is the I).
HomespunEffects said:
F7 is probably a tritone substitution going to E minor (♭2⁷of3-) and Bb7 (♭7⁷) is a backdoor dominant.
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Well, just sort of.
Am-G-F = socalled "phrygian progression" and F7 is a variation of that. Could of course as well be treated as a tritone sub of B7, in case it's resolving to E. But typically, it's a variation of a subdominant character (F being the relative major of Dmin).
Bb7 is a very typical tritone sub for E7.

HomespunEffects said:
I was referring to this:
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IIImin7 is a typical sub for a major tonic.
Emin7/C = Cmaj9.
(C)-E-G-B-D, root often played by a bass. Or not. It's still most often sounding like the tonic (obviously as well depending on the context). I think it's also called "counter parallel" (but that is considered a bad translation as the musical "parallel" in german means "relative" in english, one of the annoyances of international music communication).
Could as well be called "mediant", but it's not as descriptive as it basically means any chord any kind of third away from the source.
 
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HomespunEffects said:
It doesn’t have to be covered by it. E7 is just a secondary dominant going to A minor (5of6-). F7 is probably a tritone substitution going to E minor (♭2⁷of3-) and Bb7 (♭7⁷) is a backdoor dominant.


was that a test? 😂
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Actually there’s a huge likelihood that if you encounter that it’s modulating from C to Am.
And no it’s not a secondary dominant because it is the primary dominant in Am.

The F7 can be subVofV. However it really comes from being subdominant.

As in the Ⅳ-7 Ⅳ-6/Ⅱø7 ♭Ⅱ△7 ♭Ⅵ7
D-7 D-6/Bø7 B♭△7 F7 in Am.

So that F7 isn’t coming from the world of C but Am.

Alternatively F-7 F-6 B♭7 D♭△7 A♭7 are minor subdominants.
Meaning they are chords from C- used for swapping out the subdominant and/or dominant in C.
 
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