You might be surprised by some of the combinations. Here’s a handful of songs that use both the major and minor chords in their composition. Now that we’ve got the basic theory behind major and minor chords and keys, it’s important to see how they feel in real life. This is, of course, nowhere near an exhaustive list, and you should listen to different keys to make your own list.Ĭhoosing the right key, like tempo and dynamics, is vital to creating the emotion you want for a song.
Choosing the KeyĪlthough we can emphasize am emotion with the major and minor modes, each key also has its own personality. Practice then makes it second nature to transition between major and minor chords, while learning the correct positioning for them. Once you are able to recognize these patterns and follow their “rules” you can figure out most things on your own.
When you boil it down, music is simply all about patterns. This simple formula can be applied to figure out the notes in any major or minor scale.
Generally speaking, major chords tend to sound bright, while minor chords sound darker.Īnd as a 9-year-old, that explanation was good enough. On a basic level, major chords usually mean happy, while minor chords usually mean sad.Īnd on an emotional level, that’s true. If you try hard enough, you might remember the teacher talking about the difference between major and minor chords. Think back to those early elementary school music classes.