Major chords are said to have major thirds in them, but minor chords use minor thirds. and the “5th,” which is two degrees higher than the 3rd.Ī minor chord, on the other hand, uses the same 1st and 5th notes as the major chord, but the 3 rd is lowered or flattened by a half step or semitone.Ī flat note uses the little ♭ symbol.The “3rd,” which is two degrees higher than the root note,.The “1st,” AKA the root note of the chord, which can be any note in the major scale,.A basic chord of three notes, or triad, uses the first, third, and fifth notes from a scale. Using minor chords effectively is crucial to expressing difficult emotions.Ĭhords are made of three or more notes from the same scale. The Billboard charts also lean towards songs that feature minor chord progressions. Some genres are dominated by minor chords, like metal or some forms of EDM. But making a song sound “sad” relies heavily on minor chords and their progressions. Meanwhile, minor chords are dark and melancholy. Major chords tend to sound bright and happy to us. Most of a song’s overall mood comes from whether it has a major or minor chord progression. Until now, everyone has been teaching production totally backward.īut if you just want to learn about Minor Chord Progressions specifically, keep reading. We put together a brief training that covers a totally new approach to music production. If you’re like most composers and writers, you’re probably producing your own music as well. I'm not sure of any theoretical basis for this other than that it's really just progressive movement along the chromatic scale in the case of semitone movement and the diatonic scale in the case of full tone movement.įrom a compositional perspective, it's a relatively simple matter to just try a semitonal or full tone chord change within the context of the song you are writing and just 'see' if it 'works' in the context of whatever song you happen to be composing.Get industry-quality mixes every time (steal this framework) This happens a lot in jazz but you also see it in rock, pop and classical. You also often see the inverse of this, where only the base note moves in full tone or semitone steps while the harmony sticks to the primary chords of the key with a more pedestrian chord progression (e.g., ii-V-I or vi-ii-V-I). Often, the bass note sometimes is and sometimes is not a part of the harmonic triad. This is frequently employed as a major triad or one of its inversions. In addition to the other answers, there is a more general concept of full tone and semitone chord movement in chord changes in general.

B flat minor scale chord progressions