Major and minor chords form the cornerstones of Western musical harmony, providing essential flavors and feelings essential for making music.
Most people recognize that major chords sound joyful while minor chords evoke sadness; however, this is only an oversimplification of how these chords differ.
Definition
Most chords consist of three to four pitches, but many styles of music such as jazz tend to favor chords with five or six pitches.
The distinction between major and minor chords can be easily explained using one simple rule: major chords feature a major third while minor ones sport minor thirds. This basic principle serves as the cornerstone of major and minor tone colors in scales, triads and chords alike.
A major triad typically consists of the first, third and fifth notes from the major scale. It can be notated as C, CM or CD.
Add flavor to a major chord by including its seventh degree from the major scale in your triad, known as a major seventh chord (notated as C7, but as Cmaj7 or CM7) with its flattened third. This flattened third gives this chord its minor sound while distinguishing it from diminuendo or augmento chords (which use lowercase “m” or “a”) while leaving all other scale degrees unchanged.
Scales
Music offers many different scales and scale qualities. Each can either have a major or minor sound depending on its distance between notes – for instance a C major chord contains two whole tones between its root and third note while its counterpart, C minor chord, requires only one and half.
As you gain more understanding of scales, you’ll come to realize that any major song has its own relative minor scale called A Minor. This means that its notes correspond with those found in C major, yet sound distinct when played together.
Understanding how to build minor chords is fundamental in producing different styles of musical composition. For instance, Gotye’s song “Someone That I Used To Know” employs a popular chord progression starting from A minor and moving through E minor and D minor chords to elicit tension and emotion – something often heard in classic twentieth century suspense music.
Triads
Triads consist of the lowest, middle, and highest notes of a scale; chords without stacking their notes into thirds are known as dyads or unisons and don’t belong to either major or minor categories.
Triads are an easy and basic way to add harmony and melody to a melody, providing a clean sound and creating harmony that supports melody. By changing up their use in pieces you can alter their mood dramatically.
Major chords tend to connote happiness while minor chords connote sadness. However, this doesn’t always hold true: sad songs can often be played in major keys while happy songs tend to use minor ones; similarly major seventh chords may cause sadness while minor sevenths bring happiness; it all depends on chord quality – its intervals being what distinguish triads from other types of chords.
Intervals
Most chord progressions are composed using major scales, but that doesn’t limit them from featuring both minor and major intervals. For instance, the basic C major chord contains both minor third (-3) and perfect fifth intervals; adding another note, such as major seventh seventh (B), will create the more complex Cmaj7 chord.
Intervals, like scales, measure the distance between one note and its neighbor – or more precisely between each semitone separating them – which gives each chord its characteristic quality.
The third interval distinguishing major from minor chords is particularly distinctive; this difference provides major-sounding chords with their bright, cheery sound while minor scales and chords have a darker, mournful quality. Even slight modifications of this interval can have dramatic reverberations on a piece’s overall sound, so being aware of their presence is crucial for accurate performance.