Minor chords possess a melancholic sound that can elicit feelings such as nostalgia, longing and sadness. Their subdued tonality adds depth and resonance to any musical composition.
Major chords tend to produce a brighter and happier tone when paired with minor chords; however, when used alone they may create dissonance when combined together.
Triads
A chord consists of three or more notes, known as triads, composed from the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes in any scale. Their quality can be defined by their intervals – specifically how far apart its notes are in semitones – for example C, F, and G is considered a major chord because its third note (F) is four semitones away from its root (C); on the other hand D, E, and A are minor as its second note (E) only three semitones away. This pattern applies across any key, and will sound great in any key.
A triad can be identified by its root and inversion notes; its root note being the initial note in its key, while inversions refer to how triads stack on one another on the fretboard, making it easy to distinguish which chord you’re playing by its shape on the fretboard.
Knowing the qualities of a triad is vitally important for musicians as this allows them to define their tonal identity. A major chord tends to feel “happy” whereas minor triads evoke sadness. Aside from learning these triad shapes and playing them well, understanding why certain ones sound the way they do is equally important.
As part of your learning experience of triads, memorizing their chord symbols will help you quickly recognize which triad is being played when using multiple of them in one sequence. Furthermore, understanding that octave equivalence rules apply regardless of whether you’re playing in major or minor keys and that using double stops with wide intervals may alter their identification while keeping the fundamentals the same is also helpful in correctly recognizing chords.
I-V-I
Musicians construct chords by skipping notes to form their shapes. Varying degrees of skips give each chord its individual major, minor or diminished quality: in a major key key the I chord contains C E and G notes while its counterpart in D FA A makes up its shape while A C E are included as notes within its structure.
This progression begins with chords with an optimistic, upbeat feel; but as soon as its final chord comes around, it seems to signify something else is ending – perhaps death, or just longing that must be satisfied. The Killers used this progression in Jenny Was a Friend of Mine with great effect; building drama and hope through its opening chords before gradually adding melancholy overtones with IV and V chords.
Understanding why major and minor chords sound the way they do requires looking at their underlying scale notes, specifically natural minor scale alternatives like harmonic minor, melodic minor and natural minor scales – each offering slightly different tones that create unique-sounding chords.
As an illustration, in a minor key the ii chord is composed of D-F-A notes but in minor harmonic scale it will use D-G-B because of a flattened third.
Practice many minor scales to understand their sound and select one suitable to your songs.
Note that chords in a major key can contain the same notes as minor chords – this is known as a relative major chord. An easy way to spot this phenomenon is to play all i, iv and vi chords from your chosen major key starting on another note (for instance starting on E minor and playing all of these chords as in G major will create such a relative major chord as they share all of the same notes).