Roman Numeral Chord Analysis
I think I hear the eyes glazing already. Don’t worry this isn’t going to get too deep, this will just be an introduction to the idea of looking at chords by roman numerals. I thought it would be a good follow up to the article on scales as we use the scales to work out the number of the chords. Let’s start with the C Major scale again : c-d-e-f-g-a-b-c - essentially that’s all the white keys on the piano from one C to the next. All right, let’s review the roman numerals. (at least the ones we’ll use here.) I II III IV V VI VII (that’s 1 2 3 4 5 6 7) The only difference is that we’ll use lower case for chords that are minor so you could see i ii iii iv v vi vii instead. With me so far?
Okay. The I chord in the key of C Major is built from C at the root and is spelled C-E-G we can re-arrange them anyway up and down the keyboard with c on bottom, e or g on bottom or top and as long as we have those three notes it’s a C Major chord and since that’s built on the first note of our c scale we have another name for it the I chord (pronounced “the one chord”). All right, let’s hit our other major chords in the key of C Major: the F chord is spelled F-A-C and since it starts from the fourth note of our C Major scale here it is called the IV (four) chord. There’s also the G Major chord which is spelled G-B-D and that is the V (five) chord. This last one is very often altered a little bit. They tend to add a note to it and make it the V7 chord. The note that is added is a 7th above where the chord starts (G) - so the added note is F (Remember an 8th or octave would get us to the next G). So… the V7 chord in the key of C Major is G-B-D-F (and in this form they will sometimes leave out the D.)
So, why do we go through this exercise and think of chords as roman numerals?
One good reason is to be able to transpose a song quickly. If you know other keys, and know that the song you’re playing starts on the I chord, goes to the IV chord, back to the I chord, then moves from V7 to IV to I, you can quickly and easily play it in any key you know. It also gives a good way to analyze the chord movements of a song and start to understand harmonically the structure of the song and compare to other compositions.
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