Discovering minor chords for piano can add depth of emotion to your music. Built upon similar tones as major chords but featuring additional sadness or tension.
To construct a minor chord, begin with A as your root note and move up one semitone until reaching C as its minor third and then another semitone for E as its perfect fifth note. Alternately, inversions allow you to build multiple minor chords simultaneously.
Identifying key signatures
Major and minor don’t exist separately in music – they coexist perfectly (though many students struggle with grasping this initially). Most songs contain both major and minor chords that complement one another as the key of each song impacts its overall tone.
To identify the key of a piece, simply find its last sharp or flat on the staff, which will act as its key signature. If it’s modal in nature, locate its major scale equivalent and play through; any accidentals that appear will help pinpoint its key.
As your ability increases, it’s also crucial that you become acquainted with the three minor scales: natural minor, harmonic minor and melodic minor. Although these may differ slightly in scale degrees and solfege syllables from their major-scale counterparts, they still follow a pattern of whole steps and half steps.
Identifying minor scales
Building chords is an essential skill for any pianist or keyboardist. Chords generally consist of three notes called triads; these may include the root note, minor third, and perfect fifth notes. Minor chords may also be marked with “m or min.”
Minor chords require an understanding of scales. Each major scale has an equivalent in the minors. To identify its relative minor of any given major scale, simply pick a starting point (usually its tonic note), count down three half steps to find its minor third, then count four half steps down again until reaching its perfect fifth note.
To create a minor chord, simply lower the middle note by one semitone – so, for instance, to turn an E major chord into a minor one, play the black key immediately to its left, B flat – creating the chord C minor.
Building minor chords
While major chords tend to create upbeat tunes, minor chords can add an ethereal and somber sound that suits many musical genres. No matter your musical genre preference, understanding how to build these chords is vital to creating great music.
Minor chords are triads consisting of three basic keyboard notes – a root note, minor third and perfect fifth – similar to major chords; with the major difference being that minor chords have flattened thirds compared with major chords (i.e. a note being one half step lower in pitch than in major chords).
Minor seventh chords differ from traditional minor chords in that they typically take the form of an “m7 or min7”. There are 12 minor seventh chords available to add depth and dimension to your songs – find out all 12 here by clicking here; some of the more frequently encountered examples include:
Inversions
Chord inversions are an invaluable asset when playing piano because they enable faster finger movement on the keyboard. When played as inverted chords, their position on the piano keyboard shifts upward by one tone (thus increasing distance between third and fifth notes) which allows for seamless chord transitions with minimum finger movements required.
Minor chords produce a sadder, melancholic sound than major chords and are widely used in contemporary songs ranging from Beethoven’s 5th Symphony to Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger”. You can hear these subtleties everywhere!
Understanding how to create minor chords is vitally important as they form the basis of many four-chord progressions found in songs. Their creation is straightforward – simply pick a root note and add minor thirds and perfect fifths from there – plus finding appropriate intervals on a keyboard by counting up or down by half steps (for instance a major third will skip three piano keys while minor thirds only skip two piano keys).