Have you ever heard a piece of music that sounds like it was going along just fine and suddenly the whole thing sounded higher or lower? Or have you heard a piece that sounded just as happy as can be and then with the flip of a switch, it became sad?

This isn’t by accident. Composers employ a technique called modulation to accomplish that. So why do they do it, anyway? Sometimes there are real-world reasons such as a duet between two singers with very different ranges in their voice. By moving the whole piece up or down, two people with very different vocal ranges can sing it.

Often, though, there are much less technical reasons. Sometimes composers employ modulation simply to make a piece of music sound fresh in the listener’s ear. Music is largely based on repetition and repetition can get boring. Modulation makes the music sound fresh in the ears of the listener.

But you’re probably saying, “You’ve told me what modulation does but you haven’t told me what it is or how to do it.”

Here it is: Modulation is simply changing the key of a piece of music while the piece is being played. For example, maybe the key of the music was G Major but that key was getting a little stale in the ears of the listener so the composer changed it to A Major just to freshen it up.

Sometimes the composer changes the written key signature in the music while other times they don’t. If the modulation is a very temporary event, the written key signature often doesn’t change. If it is going to remain for a long period of time, the person playing the piece will often see a new key.

Now, you’re probably saying, “That’s really cool. How do I do it?” There are musicians who specialize in the study of music and how it’s put together. These people are called music theorists. They will tell you that modulation is often difficult. Not all keys can be used next to each other (the way not all colors can be combined on the same painting) There’s a complicated process in the world of music theorists.

There’s good news, though. There’s a whole other school that isn’t really a school at all. Musicians without all of that advanced knowledge figured out that sometimes modulation works by simply changing the key abruptly. They found that an abrupt change is sometimes pleasing to the ear. They also found that if they can get to the V Chord (five chord) which is the chord that is built on the fifth note of the key, that makes it easy to jump in to another key.

Those scholarly music theory types look over their glasses and say, “we call the V chord a pivot chord.” That’s just a fancy name for a chord that can be found in both keys.

By the way, if you’ve heard of transposition, modulation is different. Transposition is taking an entire piece of music and changing it to another key. Modulation is a change in key within a piece of music instead of the entire piece.

If you want to study modulation more, there are plenty of books written on the subject and those academic types are right, it is rather complicated sometimes but sometimes music is all about finding something that sounds good and doing it. Spend some time experimenting with modulation. We have a course on modulation and transposition at our catalog site - click the link below.
Copyright by Duane Shinn June 12, 2011. Do not use without permission.

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Often you can give your songs a “lift” by modulating up a half-step from the key you are in. For example, if you are playing a song in the key of A major, try playing the last verse or chorus of the song in Bb. All you have to do is locate the V7 chord of the new key, and off you go.

If you need help in the area of modulation and/or transposition (they are similar but different) please go to Modulation and Transposition.

Do you know how to modulate from one key to another key? Do you get modulation confused with transposition? When you transpose a piece of music, you play it in a key which is different from the original key. Let’s say you are playing for a singer, and the song is too high for them. You can transpose (change keys) the song to a lower key. (For a complete course on modulation and transposition, click here.)

Modulation is different: It is the process of getting from one key to another. Listen to this podcast and you’ll catch on quickly:

Enhanced Podcast [ 6:50 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Pseudo-modulation is a little known technique that any pianist can use to brighten up a song. The idea is to apparently modulate to a new key, but really end up in the same key. Most non-musicians will never notice it consciously, but they will “feel” the lift it gives to the song. And musicians will likely say “How did you do that?”

Watch this minute-and-a-half video and you’ll get the picture:

Pseudo-Modulation — False Modulation from chordman on Vimeo.