What key are these progressions in?

[Count_fuzzball]

What key(s) are these chord progressions in?

Gm Bb C# D#

C G Am F

Gm F Dm C

Thanks.

[SWTrex]

What key(s) are these chord progressions in?

Gm Bb C# D#

C G Am F

Gm F Dm C

Thanks.

Hard to say based on the limited context; I would say that if these were leading towards the end of a piece, the key signatures would be:

F major
C major
F major

SWTrex

[karacha]

Let's start with the easy ones:

2. C major: I V vi IV. Nothing unusual about this one.

3. F Major: ii I vi V. vi in this case belongs to the subdominant harmonic "field" resulting in a plagal beginning S-T followed by a standard S-D. Only needs F at the end to complete this progression.

1. Looks more complicated on the surface, but C# and D# should really be Db and Eb. This results in the overall key of Bb:

vi I bIII (borrowed chord/mode mixture) IV. Only needs Bb at the end for a plagal cadence, or a F7 Bb for an authentic cadence.

[vjc02s3705]

I have some comments for the above kind reply. 1. It is in Bflat major ( but you could argue it is in its relative minor Gminor ) but I dont see why you need Bflat or F7 Bflat at the end to complete it. The MAJOR chord in the third mediant has a strong tendency to go to a minor chord in sixth (Gm). So this should be completed by Gminor. MAJOR chord in the third mediant is usually a base chord for melody subtonic

2. This is absolute correct. You can later add any chord to it because this chord is simply a variation of Canon chord. As long as in the end you bring it back to tonic. 3 is correct

[karacha]

Well, keep in mind these chord progressions don't have any context. We don't know where they appear in the piece.

So my comments simply reflects the way I could see this developing. Re: G minor for progression #1... Db chord does not belong to G minor (but it can be bIII in Bb major). As c# (diminished, for example) it could function as viio/V, but it is not diminished, so that solution is out. As Db, it could also be a nice chromatic chord N/IV, but this would need a resolution to C minor. Instead it goes to Eb. That's why the key of Bb works better. How to continue or end this progression -- again, it really depends more on your personal taste then anything else. You could modulate to a different key if you wanted to, for example.

Let say...

Bb: vi I bIII (borrowed chord/mode mixture) IV. Now, take that IV (Eb major chord), use it as a common chord (pivot) between Bb and Eb major, and just modulate to Eb by writing

Eb: ii (f minor) V7 (Bb7) I (Eb) or even i (eb minor) ending up in the key of eb minor that has 6 flats. The possibilities are almost endless.

[frederik D]

I think SWtrex provided a nice alternative for the first progression: F.
So then you have a quite typical progression in pop/rockmusic: ii (Gm) IV (Bb) bVI (Db) bVII (Eb), which would lead to I (F).

As others stated: there's very little context here, so we're just dealing with "plausibilities".

fred

[chardin]

I'm confused by the "too little context" comments. Can someone provide an example where more context would change one of the answers?