Major or minor?

What makes a chord major or minor

A major or minor chord (a triad) is three notes: the root, the third and the fifth. Root and fifth are the same in both, seven semitones apart. The third decides. Four semitones above the root (a major third) and the chord is major; three semitones (a minor third) and it is minor. A major is A–C♯–E, A minor is A–C–E: one key on the piano, one fret on the guitar. Seen as stacked thirds, a major chord is a major third with a minor third on top (4 + 3), a minor chord the other way round (3 + 4). Scales and keys are named by the same rule, from the third above their first note.

Most listeners raised on Western music hear major as brighter and minor as darker, and school shortens that to happy and sad. It is a fair first guide and a poor rule, because tempo, register and rhythm weigh as much. Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" is in F♯ minor and fills dance floors; Eric Clapton's "Tears in Heaven" is in A major and is about the death of his son. The words are Latin for larger and smaller, as in Ursa Major and Ursa Minor (the Great and the Little Bear) or Canis Major and Canis Minor (the Great and the Little Dog). They describe the size of the third, not the mood.

How to use the major or minor test

Part one plays ten chords, each on a random root. The first five are in root position, the root at the bottom. In the last five the notes are reshuffled (inversions), so the top note gives nothing away and only the colour is left. Part two plays five four-chord progressions built like pop songs, and you mark each chord. That is harder: the ear follows the movement first and the colour second. In a major key the minor chords are ii, iii and vi (in C: D minor, E minor, A minor), and vi is the one songs use most. C–G–Am–F is "Let It Be"; Leonard Cohen sings the move in "Hallelujah": the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift. "Play it again" repeats any round. After the score, "Hear major, then minor" plays C major and C minor back to back. The chords come from your browser, three voices each.

How to tell if a song or key is major or minor

How do I hear if a song is major or minor?

Find the note the song comes to rest on: the melody usually ends there and the last chord is built on it. Hum that note, then listen to whether the chord over it sounds bright or dark. To check, sing up from it: do–re–mi, the start of "Frère Jacques", is major. The same tune with the mi a semitone lower, as Gustav Mahler sets it in the D minor funeral march of his First Symphony, is minor. Watch out for loops. "Zombie" by the Cranberries cycles E minor, C, G and D, the four chords of a song in G major, and sounds minor because it keeps coming home to E minor. Which chord sounds like home decides the key, not which chords appear. If you can hum the tune, the singing key finder names its key, major or minor.

How do I tell from sheet music if a key is major or minor?

The key signature leaves two candidates: a major key and its relative minor, three semitones lower. No sharps or flats is C major or A minor; one sharp is G major or E minor. Then look at the last bass note and the final chord (usually the tonic), the first chord, and the accidentals. A minor key usually raises its seventh note so it leads back home, so a piece in A minor keeps showing G♯ and one in E minor D♯. If the G♯ comes just before a final A minor chord, it is almost certainly A minor; a G♯ mid-piece can also be a passing E major chord in C major.

Major and minor scales, and their notes

A scale has seven different notes; the eighth is the first one an octave up. Between them are whole steps (W, two semitones) and half steps (H, one semitone), and their order makes a scale major or minor:

Put both on the same note and three notes differ: the minor scale has a lower third, sixth and seventh. Natural minor has no note a semitone below home, so harmonic minor raises the seventh back to make one (the leading tone). Melodic minor raises the sixth as well, to smooth the leap of a step and a half from A♭ to B, and comes down as natural minor.

Either scale can start on any note; the steps stay the same. From A, W W H W W W H gives A B C♯ D E F♯ G♯ A, A major with three sharps, and W H W W H W W gives A B C D E F G A, A minor with none. A single note is neither major nor minor. E is the major third above C and the minor third above C♯, and it belongs to C major and A minor alike: only the note it is measured from decides. The pentatonic scale comes in both kinds as well. C D E G A is major pentatonic; the same five notes from A (A C D E G) are minor pentatonic.

C major and C minor share a first note and are called parallel keys. A relative minor shares every note instead and starts on the sixth: A minor is the white keys from A, A B C D E F G A, with C major's empty key signature. That is why C major and A minor are the two keys with no sharps or flats. To find any relative minor, go three semitones down from the major key's first note: G major to E minor, F major to D minor. Every key has its own page with its scale and chords, starting with C major and A minor.

Major and minor keys chart: every key signature

Each sharp moves the key a fifth up the circle of fifths, each flat a fifth down. F♯ major and G♭ major are the same keys on a piano, spelled two ways; likewise C♯ major sounds like D♭ major, C♭ major like B major. To read a signature without the table: with sharps, the major key is a semitone above the last sharp (three sharps end on G♯, so A major); with flats, it is the second-to-last flat (B♭, E♭, A♭ is E♭ major), and one flat is F major. The relative minor is three semitones below, as before.

The chords in a major or minor key

Every key has seven chords, one on each note of its scale. In major they run major, minor, minor, major, major, minor, diminished (I ii iii IV V vi vii°): in C, C Dm Em F G Am B°. In natural minor: i ii° III iv v VI VII, in A minor Am B° C Dm Em F G, and the v is usually played major (E, with harmonic minor's G♯) so it pulls home. Songs also borrow across: Radiohead's "Creep" runs G, B, C, Cm, and the Cm is borrowed from G minor.

How to tell if a chord or triad is major or minor

On paper, stack the notes in thirds first. E–G–C restacks to C–E–G, so the root is C; G–C–E♭ restacks to C–E♭–G. Then count the semitones from the root to the middle note: four is major, three is minor. The first is C major, the second C minor. If the notes will not stack into thirds, it is not a plain triad (sus chords, below).

On a guitar the third usually moves by one fret. The open shapes, counted from the low E string (x = don't play, 0 = open string):

On a piano the middle finger moves one key down: C–E–G becomes C–E♭–G, A–C♯–E becomes A–C–E. That is the whole difference between the A major and the A minor chord, C♯ or C. As keys they differ more: A major has three sharps (F♯, C♯, G♯), A minor none. A minor is written Am (also Amin or A−, and as a scale degree with a lowercase numeral, vi in C major); A major is written A.

How to tell if an interval is major or minor

Major and minor began as words for intervals. Only seconds, thirds, sixths and sevenths come in both sizes, and the major one is always a semitone wider. Count the semitones from the lower note:

Unisons, fourths (5), fifths (7) and octaves (12) are called perfect and are neither; the tritone (6) sits between fourth and fifth. In a major scale every interval up from the first note is major or perfect; in natural minor the third, sixth and seventh are minor and the second stays major. To hear them rather than count them: interval ear training.

Is it major or minor? Modes, power chords and the rest

Each mode is the major scale started on another note, and its third puts it in one family or the other:

The family holds on any note: C♯ Phrygian is minor, E♭ Lydian is major. G Mixolydian's chords are G, Am, B°, C, Dm, Em and F, a major home chord with a major chord a whole step below it.

• Power chords (C5: C and G) have no third, so they are neither; the riff or the melody over them decides.
• Sus chords swap the third for a second or a fourth (Csus2 is C–D–G, Csus4 C–F–G) and are neither too.
• Diminished (C–E♭–G♭) is two minor thirds, augmented (C–E–G♯) two major thirds.
• Seventh chords add a fourth note: Cmaj7 is C–E–G–B, Cm7 C–E♭–G–B♭, and C7 (C–E–G–B♭) is a major chord with a minor seventh. The blues plays those seventh chords and sings the minor third over them, which is why it sounds like both.
• Is major or minor better? Neither, and neither is more important. They are two colours, and most songs use both: a major key has three minor chords of its own.
• Music in a major or minor key is called tonal. Before about 1600 Western music was ordered by the church modes, and music that avoids any key is atonal.
• Is major or minor higher? Neither key is higher. On the same root the minor third is a semitone lower: over C, E is 329.63 Hz and E♭ 311.13 Hz.
• Is there a word between major and minor? Not in Western theory. Arabic and Persian music use a neutral third of about 350 cents, halfway between the minor third (300) and the major (400).

Why minor sounds sad, and whether it has to

Largely, it is learned. Gioseffo Zarlino called the minor third sad in 1558, and Richard Parncutt (Musicae Scientiae, 2014) suggests the link between minor and sadness grew gradually, from the 14th to the 17th century, along with the major-minor system itself. Children pick it up late: in a study by Simone Dalla Bella and colleagues (Cognition, 2001), five-year-olds sorted happy from sad music by tempo alone, and only six- to eight-year-olds used major and minor too. Listeners in Papua New Guinea with little exposure to Western music showed almost no difference in feeling between major and minor (Eline Smit and colleagues, PLOS ONE, 2022). In the US Top 40, the share of songs in minor rose over five decades from the 1960s (Glenn Schellenberg and Christian von Scheve, 2012).

There is a physical trace all the same. A major triad sits low in the overtone series of every note, as harmonics 4, 5 and 6 (4 : 5 : 6); a minor triad appears only much higher, at 10 : 12 : 15. A piano's equal-tempered major third is 400 cents, 14 cents wider than the pure 5 : 4 (386.3), and its minor third is 300 cents, 16 cents narrower than the pure 6 : 5 (315.6).

How to train your ear for major and minor

1. Give the difference a sound in your head: C major, then C minor, five times in a row. Here: "Try an example", then "Hear major, then minor".
2. Sing the third. Over any chord, sing the root and then the middle note: if it is the mi of do–re–mi, the chord is major.
3. Take the test once a day, with headphones. Single chords in root position usually come first, inversions later, and the progressions, where each chord lasts under a second, last.
4. Move to songs. For each song you hear this week, find home and call it major or minor, then check yourself with the singing key finder.
5. Then the next chord colours: diminished, augmented and the seventh chords, in the ear-training exercises.

Then make something of it

The last progression you heard goes into Brumm as a melody, its chords played one note at a time inside a club track; then hum your own line over it. No account, no upload.

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