Parallel Chord on:
[Wikipedia]
[Google]
[Amazon]
In music theory, a 
A major scale can be transformed to its parallel minor by lowering the third, sixth, and seventh
major scale
The major scale (or Ionian mode) is one of the most commonly used musical scales, especially in Western music. It is one of the diatonic scales. Like many musical scales, it is made up of seven notes: the eighth duplicates the first at doub ...
and a minor scale
In music theory, the minor scale is three scale patterns – the natural minor scale (or Aeolian mode), the harmonic minor scale, and the melodic minor scale (ascending or descending) – rather than just two as with the major scale, which al ...
that have the same tonic note are called parallel keys and are said to be in a parallel relationship. Forte, Allen (1979). ''Tonal Harmony'', p.9. 3rd edition. Holt, Rinehart, and Wilson. . "When a major and minor scale both begin with the same note ... they are called ''parallel''. Thus we say that the parallel major key of C minor is C major, the parallel minor of C major is C minor." The parallel minor or tonic minor of a particular major key is the minor key based on the same tonic; similarly the parallel major has the same tonic as the minor key. For example, G major and G minor have different modes but both have the same tonic, G; so G minor is said to be the parallel minor of G major. In contrast, a major scale and a minor scale that have the same key signature (and therefore different tonics) are called relative key
In music, relative keys are the major and minor scales that have the same key signatures ( enharmonically equivalent), meaning that they share all the same notes but are arranged in a different order of whole steps and half steps. A pair of ma ...
s.
A major scale can be transformed to its parallel minor by lowering the third, sixth, and seventh scale degrees
In music theory, the scale degree is the position of a particular note on a scale relative to the tonic, the first and main note of the scale from which each octave is assumed to begin. Degrees are useful for indicating the size of intervals ...
, and a minor scale can be transformed to its parallel major by sharpening those same scale degrees.
In the early nineteenth century, composers began to experiment with freely borrowing chords from the parallel key.
To the Western