Zystkmt

I'm a beginner piano player and theorist and played around on the piano and came across this progression from Am to Fm which has a very grim and black metalesque/dungeon synthy sound. I couldn't find any songs with this progression using hooktheory.

I can't fit it into a chord progression I know of and don't know how to continue this nice grim sound. Can anyone point in a direction where to look further for the underlying theory?

Continuing with Dm E sound ok, but not as convincing as Am to Fm.

Chromatic mediant is the technical name
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromatic_mediant

This is where the chord roots are a third apart and there is one common tone.

So with Fm and Am you have:

F, A flat, C



A, C, E

So the "C" is the common tone, and F and A chord roots are a third apart.

I think part of what makes the great sound is that the two moving voices move by half steps. Half steps are important with many chord resolutions/tendency tones.

Also, notice in that wiki article the example from Mozart K. 475 where the chromatic mediant relationship and the common tone are used to make a common-tone modulation to a distant key. So on a very large scale you could think of the Fm and Am relationship in terms of a key change.

A little add on for Dm and E.

I assume you mean E (major.)

Let's look at those pitches:

    Dm = D, F, A

    E  = E, G#, B

If we put those in order: D, E, F, G#, A, B

One thing that should jump out is the F to G#. That happens to be an augmented second. To fast forward a bit... an augmented second comes up in the harmonic minor scale. In this case the G# is the leading tone of the A harmonic minor scale. The full scale being A, B, C, D, E, F, G#, A. Dm and E function as the iv and V in A minor.

If you are just going back an forth from Dm to E you are sort of hovering around the dominant V chord. Typically you would move from the domimant to the tonic i chord Am. You could try going to Am as part of that progression.

We call this a chromatic mediant relationship.

To put it simply, two chords are chromatic mediants of each other if their roots are a third apart and they share one common tone. In the case of A minor and F minor, the common tone is C. Furthermore, note that the two remaining voices move by half step into the second chord: the A in A minor moves to A♭ in the F-minor chord, and the E of A minor moves to the F in the F-minor chord. The smooth voice leading is what helps to keep this progression together.

But note that F minor is not the only chord that fits this definition. There are three other chromatic mediants to this A-minor chord: C♯ minor, C minor, and F♯ minor.

As it turns out, chromatic mediants are the same quality as the original chord. So if you want to quickly find the four chromatic mediants of a harmony, find the roots located up and down a major and minor third from the root, and remember that those triads will be the same quality (major or minor) as the original chord.

A different way of looking at what you did - and more importantly, where else you can go, is the fact that you've used two chords from parallel keys. C major and C minor. The Am is from C maj. and the Fm from Cm.

'Borrowing' chords in this way works well, and now gives you quite a few choices as to what else may suit your needs. Any of the 7 from C major, and any of the 7 from C minor!

That could be called a chromatic mediant of A minor. Notice how the note C, the 3rd of A minor, is carried over to the F minor chord.