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Relative minor - Definition and Overview |
| Related Words: Allied, Analogous, Ancestry, Approximate, Associative, Aunt, Blood, Brother, Child, Cognate, Collateral, Commensurable, Comparative |
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In music, the relative minor of a particular major key (or the relative major of a minor key) is the key which has the same key signature but a different tonic, as opposed to parallel minor or major, respectively. For example, G major and E minor both have a single sharp in their key signature; so we say that E minor is the relative minor of G major. The relative minor of a major key always has a tonic a minor third lower.
A complete list of relative minor/major pairs is:
- C major–A minor
- C sharp/D flat major–A sharp/B flat minor
- D major–B minor
- D sharp/E flat major–C minor
- E major–C sharp/D flat minor
- F major–D minor
- F sharp/G flat major–D sharp/E flat minor
- G major–E minor
- G sharp/A flat major–F minor
- A major–F sharp/G flat minor
- A sharp/B flat major–G minor
- B/C flat major–G sharp/A flat minor
Together with moves to the dominant (fifth scale degree) or sub-dominant (fourth scale degree), modulation to the relative minor or major are the most common in tonal music.
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