Please Help!!!

[fred2367]

O.K lets say you want to write a song that is in the key of D. In order to do this do you use the notes of the D major scale to make the chords for the song. And to stay in key do you only use the d major scale?

Please! Please! Please! Help Me!

[acidXrock]

Well I will try to answer your question to the best of my knowledge. If you take the notes of the D scale and make a chord out of each one you will ahve 7 different chords. Out of those you will most likely only use three of them. So to answer your question to write in the key of D you do not have to stay in the key of D. Use accidentals or Change keys. Study a piece o fmusic and you will see they do that alot. I hope that helped somewhat.

[talldeke]

Strickly, speaking to stay in key you should only use the notes of the D major sclae. Like acidXrock suggested, you don't have to only stay in key. However, you can "stay in key" and still have some accidentals.

As suggested, the most common chords in the key of D will be D, A, and G(The 1st, 4th, and 5th). However, Em, and Bm (the second and sixth) are also fairly common. Rounding out the list, but usually rare are F#m, and C#dim(especially rare).

However, you can add addtions (chord extensions) on to each on of these chords and they will still sound in key. For example, the G7 chord contains an F, but the G7 will still sound fine in the key of D, because your ear will hear a G chord, it will simply have a diffrent tone. Likewise, many of the chords above can be contain addtions (or suspension) that technincally break key, but the overall tone of the chord will make it sound all right.

Hope that helped.

[StonedSandman]

Would you still be technically in key if you used notes from D Major's relative minor (not sure what it is right off though)?

[Josh Redstone]

If you were do to that, you'd still be in key, just a different one. You would have modulated to the relative minor key.
Songs to this a lot, it gives them a change in feel, which is nice, cause you dont want the songs to stay the same ALL the time.
Sometimes songs do this for only one or two measures, and sometimes for the rest of the song. Its all good.