299′Ĭommon Questions about the Technical Names in Music Roman Numerals in Schubert’s ‘ Ecossaise no. Imagine having a full piece of music (32 bars and more) and having to write “tonic”, “dominant”, “subdominant” instead of “I”, “V”, “IV”, and so on.

Underneath the music, the Roman Numerals tell us what the chord progression is.Īs you can see, they’re very useful for a quick analysis. Here are a few bars from Schubert’s Ecossaise No. So just like the technical terms, Roman Numerals reveal every note’s position in the scale with the tonic being one: I. Here’s an example in the scale of E harmonic minor (with the 7 th sharpened): Roman numerals on the chords of E minor. For example: III + and vii° in the triads of a harmonic minor Notice that to distinguish between the qualities of the triads, we use capital letters (uppercase) to indicate major and augmented chords and small letters (lowercase) to indicate minor and diminished chords.Ī small plus sign to denote augmented chords and a small circle to denoteĭiminished chords. Here are all the roman numeralsĮxample in the scale of C major: Roman Numerals on the triads of the C major scale The tonic, for example, is I and the dominant is V. Pattern because we’re used to scales in which we begin and end on the tonic.īut this way of looking at the technical names with the tonic in the centre isĪnalysis, the technical names can be shortened into roman numerals from one (I) to seven (VII). The tonic is at the centre with 3 degrees to the left and 3 degrees to the right. The dominant is a fifth above tonic while the subdominant is a 5th below and so on – the tonic is at the centre. The mediant is a 3rd above tonic while the submediant a 3rd below. It’s like the tonic is a tree trunk out of which the smaller branches come out of each side.Īs we’ve seen, the leading note is a step below tonic while the supertonic is a step above. Step up from tonic the leading tone is a half step down from tonic and so on.īut there’s even more to this pattern! As if a confirmation of the principle of tonality, the tonic is in the centre of all these other tones. For example, the dominant is a fifth up from tonic the supertonic is a Probably noticed by now that the technical names themselves refer back to the Very often the tonic is the beginning and the end of a melody or a chord ‘tonality’ refers to music that works with a tonic: the ‘home sound’.

E flat major roman numerals