Chord progressions can range from soothing (George Gershwin’s “Summertime”), funky (the Commodores “Brick House”) and upbeat and rocking (Dire Straits’ “Sultans of Swing”) – making minor chords an integral part of music across genres and eras.
Use minor chord progressions in your music with this piano lesson! Additionally, learn how to reorder notes within a chord progression for harmonic depth and contrast.
Major Keys
As part of your education in chord progressions, it’s vital to learn how major and minor keys interact. This will enable you to compose melodies which capture the feel of particular keys.
Start by finding the tonic of your chosen key and begin building the scale from there. Each step you take up the scale will have different results on the music since each note represents a different interval; for instance, from C to D is considered whole tone while from C to E is half tone.
Once you’ve mastered the basic major scale, it’s time to tackle diatonic chords. Each has a distinct sound that can help add harmony to any melody in any key.
Diatonic chords can be constructed easily by starting with the tonic note and working your way upward. If playing C major, start at A and increase by whole steps or half steps until reaching B-C#-D-F#-G#, whereupon you may add the vi chord for extra variety in your song.
Minor Keys
Minor chord progressions can create the effect of melancholy or reflection in your song, creating a tense or anxious atmosphere and adding drama that complements more serious lyrics.
Minor chords are triadic chords composed of three notes – root note, minor third and perfect fifth – each separated by three semitones from their root notes; due to this difference, minor chords are typically written with an “m-” suffix, although they can also be represented using regular Roman numerals.
Minor chords can be created through various means, including natural, harmonic and melodic minor scales. You may also experiment with chord inversions and use Chord Borrowing to craft captivating progressions; Chord Borrowing involves borrowing chords from another major or minor key which provides more interest while opening up additional harmonic possibilities.
Chord Inversions
Chord inversions offer a powerful tool to add variety and complexity to piano chord progressions. Simply by changing the order of chords you can alter their interval structure and each inversion has its own distinct sound.
Step one of using chord inversions effectively is understanding triads – the foundational type of chord, composed of three notes stacked vertically into thirds.
Example: the C Major triad consists of C, E and G played sequentially from bottom to top. When inverted, however, E is moved from its original place above down into the lower octave thereby creating a new chord with C and G only.
To indicate a chord inversion on sheet music or chord charts, you can use slash notation to represent its inversion. For instance, to write out a C chord with first inversion as C/E would show that its fifth note has become its bass note instead.
Chord Borrowing
As one of the primary methods of creating minor chord progressions, chord borrowing is one of the key ideas in creating minor chord progressions. Chord borrowing means using chords from parallel major or minor keys to add variety and harmonic richness in your music – for instance Hozier’s “Take Me to Church” uses chords from A major.
Bill Withers’ “Lovely Day” features another borrowed progression, this time from E major to C minor.
By understanding chords, keys and inversions, you can begin creating your own original minor chord progressions for songs. Experiment with different combinations of chords until you find those which best suit your musical goals and style. And if you ever need help getting started there are numerous online resources which provide chord progressions for every genre or feel; just plug in genre/feel/key combo and watch magic happen!