Remind me not to work construction crews in Boston . I would not consent to having my picture taken for the purpose of being distributed to peolple unknown . I ' m not anyone ' s publicity stunt . <| sep |> Indeed , when I contemplate Salzburg , I imagine all the splendour and marble of the Hapsburgs , giant gleaming halls of imperial printers and dancing white horses . Do you have chocolate printers ? Sorry . I don ' t know much about Austria . <| sep |> Something to be noted here I would look into the difference btw nondiatonic chords and modulation . Every chord you play , besides the tonic chord , will lead slightly away from the key . In fact the tonic chord is from the start an ambiguous chord . If you just play a c major chord , then there ' s no key , just a chord . It ' s not until the subdominant and the dominant are played that there is any sense of a key . So there is this potential for key drift at every point in a piece . Which means , by avoiding the dominant , you can trick the ear into allowing new chords into the mix . If you bring back the dominant , then the key drifts back to C . But if you introduce , say an a minor , then an e minor , then you you ' ve drifted a bit , and you can allow a D major into the mix particularly bc the F of c major hasn ' t appeared in those last two chords so you play that D major , and it can be and should be related to G as the dominant of G . So you have two choices , you force the key back to C , via the subdominant F now that the F # of d major is gone or you run with that F # and keep it in your following chords . Thus you ' ve modulated to the key of G . The thing is , and this is the difference between composing and noodling , is that it ' s up to you to establish a feeling of necessity in the music . Because necessity is what drives composition . So the idea of sub key is very noncommittal . I find it interesting how simple vocabulary can denote a preconception about what it is you ' re accomplishing . Yes there ' s something to be said for mystery , but careful that it doesn ' t hid a Lukewarmness in your approach to writing ! I think the big problem I ' ve seen in this post and in other posts is that people see harmony as some kind of monolithic chordal machine . But really it should flow out of the melodic necessity of a piece , the desire for the melody to pick up that f # and stick to it Otherwise you end up with a basin full of chords and not much else ! I hope that didn ' t seem like a rant , but I just noticed something in the way you were talking about harmony , and a sense that you felt like you were just kind of putting stuff together , and maybe sensing a little frustrationconfusion about some sermon arbitrarily in the practice of music , and hoped I might help you see the difference between drifting through some chords and rightfully making music . Hope I could help and maybe spark some ideas ? Otherwise sorry lol .