Aeolian harmony

Aeolian harmony [Björnberg (1985).] is harmony or chord progression created from chords of the Aeolian mode. Commonly known as the "natural minor" scale, it allows for the construction of the following triads (three note chords built from thirds), in popular music symbols: Im, bIII, IVm, Vm, bVI, and bVII. The scale also produces II^o, which is avoided since it is diminished. The leading-tone and major V which contains it are also not used, as they would be with the natural minor scale. However, Aeolian harmony may be used with mode mixture.

For example, bVII, is a major chord built on the seventh scale degree, indicated by uppercase roman numerals for seven, respectively. Since, in comparison to the major scale, the seventh scale degree is lowered in the Aeolian mode, the chord is notated as "bVII". The chord built on the fifth scale degree, however, is minor, indicated by the lowercase "m".

There are common subsets including Im-bVII-bVI, Im-IVm-Vm and blues minor pentatonic derived chord sequences such as I-bIII-IV, I-IV, bVII (The verse of "I'm Your Man"clarifyme|date=July 2008|Wham! or Leonard Cohen?). All these lack perfect cadences (V-I) and may be thought of as derived from rewrite rules using recursive fourth structures (repeated progression by perfect fourth). Middleton Middleton (1990), p.198.] suggests of modal and fourth-orientated structures that, rather than being "distortions or surface transformations of Schenker's favoured V-I kernel, it is more likely that both are branches of a deeper principle, that of tonic/not-tonic differentiation."

ee also

*Borrowed chord

ources

*Middleton, Richard (1990/2002). "Studying Popular Music". Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 0-335-15275-9.
*Björnberg, Alf (1985). Cited in Middleton (2002), p.198.