Whether you mean to or not, you’ll almost inevitably work in a particular key when writing a song. You might decide “right, this will be in C minor,” or you might just string together a seemingly ...

Harmonic minor keys are used when writing chords. There is another version of the minor key known as the melodic minor. This is used when writing a melody. Each key signature has two possible keys.

The circle of fifths is a deceptively simple diagram that lays out every musical note, key, three-note chord and scale, and charts the relationship between them. A bit like a musical version of the ...

Daniel Levitin, in his popular bestseller entitled This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession from 2006, characterizes the perception of the minor chord, which lowers the third of a ...

To begin our discussion on what it is that makes minor chords sad, we will first listen to some examples of the use of minor chords and minor keys that demonstrate breathtaking power to convey deep ...

Popular music can be categorised into a multitude of genres, but probably the broadest are mainstream pop and R&B. This is the kind of thing you hear on the radio every day, and possibly the genres ...

Each piece of music, be it a song, symphony or concerto, is written in a specific ‘key’. But what do we mean when we refer to a musical key, why are there 24 of them, and how do composers choose which ...