Recognising major and minor keys. But even those who can instinctively hear the difference may be confused or intimidated by the question: Is this song major or minor? This is the white keys of a piano keyboard. In the example above, playing all the white notes in turn produces the scale of C Major. If you choose a different subset of notes, you can create a minor scale, and a minor key. Well, there is a huge wealth of books and articles on music theory which could explain all the intricacies of keys, scales, and chord progressions, and you could conduct a careful harmonic analysis of the song to determine its exact key and scale…. The first approach is very simple. Can you tell a major chord from a minor chord? Even if these musical terms are unfamiliar, the chances are that your ear knows the difference.

What is a Minor Key?

So how do you hear if a song is in a major or minor key?
In music theory , the key of a piece is the group of pitches, or scale , that forms the basis of a music composition in classical , Western art, and Western pop music. The group features a tonic note and its corresponding chords , also called a tonic or tonic chord , which provides a subjective sense of arrival and rest, and also has a unique relationship to the other pitches of the same group, their corresponding chords, and pitches and chords outside the group. The key may be in the major or minor mode, though musicians assume major when this is not specified, e. Popular songs are usually in a key, and so is classical music during the common practice period , around — Longer pieces in the classical repertoire may have sections in contrasting keys. Methods that establish the key for a particular piece can be complicated to explain and vary over music history. The key signature is not always a reliable guide to the key of a written piece. It does not discriminate between a major key and its relative minor; the piece may modulate to a different key; if the modulation is brief, it may not involve a change of key signature, being indicated instead with accidentals.
What is a “key”, anyway?
In pop music, the difference between a minor key and its relative major can be small, and the chords we use in minor keys frequently are closely related to those we use in major. The leading tone, which is a half step below the tonic, can make the distinction between minor and major easier to hear. In a music appreciation class, you might learn that major keys essentially sound happy, and minor keys sound sad. It has a grain of truth in pop music, too. But in pop music, the emotional quality of minor keys is a frequently ambiguous. A minor key and its relative major key can sound quite similar to one another. Note that E minor is the relative minor of G major, since both have a key signature of one sharp. In Chapter 3, we learned that in pop songs in major keys, there are four main chords: I, IV, V and vi. So the four main chords used most frequently in a minor key will also be used most frequently in its relative major. There are two main answers to this question, both of them complex.
Songs Artists Albums. Music Keys. E Minor.