Chord progressions can express our mood and emotions, from sadness to happiness; all depending on their harmonic function within a song’s structure.
Suspended chords create an aura of uncertainty by oscillating between dissonant and consonant sounds, creating the feeling of uncertainty.
Major Keys
Chord progressions form the core of most music, evoking various emotions with each chord progression. A great chord progression can help set the scene for any song – here we show how to build one to convey sadness.
Major to minor key progression is one of the most frequently employed chord progressions for sad songs, often used across genres and styles to evoke melancholy and reflective atmospheres. In this progression, starting from C Major as its tonic chord (example), minor sixth (F Major) and seventh chords (G Major) add tension before coming back together again when tonic chord is played again – an effective strategy in slow tempo music which creates emotional connections to listeners.
Another popular chord progression used in sad music is the I – V – I – VI – VII – I progression, commonly found in pop music and designed to convey feelings of melancholy and regret. Additionally, long, drawn out notes can enhance its melancholic tone further.
Another popular approach for creating sad music is by employing descending chromatic chords. These types of chords add an air of depression and loss that’s commonly heard in country songs; however, these may not always be suitable; to ensure an effective sound, other chords should also be utilized alongside them to ensure full balance is reached in sound production.
Though chord selection can influence how we perceive music, there’s no one chord progression that will create sadness in a song. Many factors play into creating that feeling; these include tempo, melody, lyrics and instrumentation choices – knowing some common sad chord progressions will give you a head start when writing music for yourself.
Minor Keys
Minor tones often get associated with sadness and melancholy feelings, yet this perception has developed through culture rather than reality. Major keys tend to be happier by nature but we have become conditioned to believe minor sounds sad because of some songs’ content.
Minor keys provide a darker and melancholy sound than major ones due to the emphasis placed on the first note (the tonic), giving more significance on that note than in major keys. Lower notes in minor keys add another level of intensity that makes music sound more grave or solemn; plus they have their own pattern of whole steps and half steps unlike major keys.
This is why, when playing C major scale and then its relative minor, its tone will differ dramatically. You can easily spot this difference when looking at white and black keys of a keyboard piano.
Find the tonic of a relative minor key by counting back from its major key’s tonic; for example if F is the major key’s tonic note then C would be its relative minor key note and would sound very different due to having a minor third scale degree difference between F and C.
Minor scales fall into three main categories, natural, harmonic and melodic. Harmonic and melodic minor scales differ from natural minor in that their third, sixth and seventh scale degrees are raised by one semitone compared with natural minor; this makes the scale more harmonious but still has a darker, melancholy sound than major.
Composers sometimes intentionally employ minor keys to achieve specific emotional effects. For example, Taxi Driver’s violent scenes were composed in minor keys in order to create more sinister and sinister moments – you may have heard similar effects in The Godfather or more recent vampire films.
Major 7th Chords
Once you’re familiar with major and minor chords, it’s time to introduce another important class of chords – seventh chords. Seventh chords stand out by adding an additional interval compared to the standard triad structure used for major and minor chords (the 1st, 3rd, 5th and 7th notes of the scale), giving them their characteristic jazzy sound. There are two kinds of seventh chords: major and dominant. Major seventh chords have more serene romantic overtones whereas dominant seventh chords create tension or dissonance; when learning these chords it is important that both versions can have different functions as both can have identical names but differ according to sound.
Both types of seventh chords can be easily created with a similar basic technique: simply add a major seventh interval above your chord’s root note. For instance, in G major, simply count all the way up the scale until reaching F#; this note represents your chord root in G major seventh mode.
Dominant seventh chords share the same form as major seventh chords but are one semitone lower in pitch, creating tension and dissonance that tends to resolve into tonic chords in rock music. They are frequently employed.
Both types of seventh chords are easy to learn and can give your songs an amazing sound, though more complex seventh chords with augmented or diminished thirds may also exist; these chords may be heard more commonly in film scores or jazz music.
Once you’ve learned the fundamentals of these chords, try playing other popular songs that feature these chords – for instance Coldplay’s “A Sky Full of Stars” has both major seventh and half-diminished seventh chords that provide excellent practice opportunities as well as developing your rhythm and fingerpicking skills, as many bass notes can be played using your thumb.
Minor 7th Chords
Minor seventh chords are an accessible, flexible chord that can be found in many different genres of music. Consisting of four to six notes, they can be played open or barred on any fretboard position – the common symbol being “x-m-r-b-d-f”. To play them on guitar simply locate its root note (usually one of its lower notes) and work outward from there.
At first, 7th chords weren’t widely appreciated in musical circles. At first they were considered too dissonant or not particularly melodic or symphonic; now however they can be found everywhere from jazz and soul music to romantic ballads and love songs.
Minor seventh chords differ from major seventh chords by being more harmonically unstable and having sharper, less sweet sounds that can sometimes dissonant listeners; so they are often accompanied by bass notes or other instruments to add harmony and create more harmonious chords. A variation on this theme called a half-diminished minor seven flat five chord is constructed using minor triads with diminished sevenths as its basis.
Subtle variations on 7th chords include those which contain either a major 9th interval, or a dominant 7. This chord, known as a minor 11 chord, can be constructed by adding either an extra major ninth interval to an existing minor seventh chord, or adding one on top of its nine tone, creating more harmonic complexity than regular minor seventh chords and producing a suspended sound quality – they were especially beloved by Thelonius Monk who included them frequently in his compositions.
Another variation of the minor seventh chord is known as the dominant sus4 chord, formed by replacing one third with fours in an existing dominant seventh chord – this creates an unusual sound which can help add floating, uneasy feelings in your compositions – you can hear this chord used effectively in Wayne Shorter’s song Fall as an example.