#31
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People say that, but I never hear that happy/sad thing, not as way to identify them, certainly. Unless a song actually is happy or sad, I don't hear that in the key. Just weird, I guess. But I would think that emotional assignment would be very culturally determined, too, like the way different cultures associate different meanings and emotions with different colors.
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"Militantly left-handed." Lefty Acoustics Martin 00-15M Taylor 320e Baritone Cheap Righty Classical (played upside down ala Elizabeth Cotten) |
#32
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Do you get some feeling about songs in Major vs. minor? Or even just hearing the scale played? There must be some reason why they are differentiated - in addition to technical explanations.
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#33
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"Militantly left-handed." Lefty Acoustics Martin 00-15M Taylor 320e Baritone Cheap Righty Classical (played upside down ala Elizabeth Cotten) |
#34
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I can hear the mood in the key easily, but I have never heard minor keys as sad. Maybe dark, eerie, mysterious, intriguing, etc., but not sad. I think that's especially true in classical music. Some of the most beautiful classical pieces I know are in minor keys and I just don't view them as sad. But I recognize that is very common generalization... I just don't share it.
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#35
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I met this bloke on here back around 2005 and love his technique of using scales ...wonder if he still hangs out here .He was good enough to send me his cd and even wrote some notes on how to play his songs and posted them to me . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeBI-1Kqyxs Love his cover of this song and it was the first time i heard it so he made it his in my eyes . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOz8jP1n9dk Rock on rick |
#36
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There are many aspects of music which contribute to its mood, and many of them will outweigh the major-minor difference. E.g., obvious things like how fast or loud a piece is played - hard for a fast tune to sound sad! But I think you can say, if all else is equal, that minor keys contribute a kind of moody intensity to the music. Major keys (like major chords) are "open", "simple", "positive", "strong". Minor keys (like minor chords) sound more "complex", "darker". Those differences don't necessarily equate to "happy/sad". Fast minor key tunes will sound energetic - the "dark" quality comes out as intensity. Slow major key songs may sound wistful, bittersweet - reflective or nostalgic, but never really sad, because they retain the "bright" simplicity of major. A nice example of up-tempo minor key is REM's Losing My Religion. It's not a "sad" song, but the minor key does express the sense of confusion or regret in the lyrics. It wouldn't be so effective in a major key - while to play it at a slower tempo would make it too melancholy. (One interesting element in the song: in the bridge it goes briefly to the relative major - as he sings "that was just a dream" - as if the major key is saying phew it's nothing to worry about! - but then it plunges back to the minor after just 4 bars, on "that's me in the corner".) An example of bittersweet major key is Rainy Night in Georgia. It expresses bittersweet nostalgia perfectly, via its maj7 chords: major chords with major 7ths added. Again, not "happy" - because it's slow - but not depressingly miserable either, because it's major. It may be melancholy, but it's the kind of melancholy that it feels good to wallow in now and then.
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"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." - Leonard Cohen. |
#37
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For example the major third interval C to E. C note overtones include notes that form a C chord (C-E-G). E note overtones include notes that form a E chord (E-G-B). Between the two E and G are shared overtones. Compare that to the overtones of a minor third interval.
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Made to one with pride and love To be that we hold so dear A voice from heavens above |
#38
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Just some random thoughts to muddy up the water a bit.
Relative major and minor - This simple concept causes a lot of confusion about major and minor keys. The 101 level theory book usually says something to the effect of starting the major scale on the 6th degree gives you the minor scale. They share the same key signature etc, etc. This leads to the type of questions we see in this thread. Why bother to call C the major key and A the minor key if they're just the same notes and chords? I'll leave the history lessons for JonR. Let's just say that early composers discovered an interesting phenomenon. You can take a group of Notes and/or chords and by how you arrange them, you can get the listener to hear different notes/chords within the group as being the main or most important note/chord. We'll call this most important note/chord Tonic (fancy way of saying "the tone"). Let's look at the chords that come from the C major scale (called diatonic which is a fancy way of saying "using only notes from the scale"): C Dm Em F G Am Bdim Of all these chords, the C is the easiest to make sound like the tonic. If you play a simple progression like so: C Am F G C There isn't really any question that C is home base for the progression. The music sounds like it comes to rest on the C chord. Composers discovered that, without much effort, you can also make the Am chord sound like home base. Try the same progression again, but this time end on Am: C Am F G Am You may not hear the music come to full stop like ending on the C chord, but there's some confusion. It sounds like maybe A minor is home base. And that's not doing anything but changing the chord you end on. If you start mixing things up bit, you can strengthen the sound of Am as tonic: C Am F Em Am If we leave out the C chord altogether, you can really start to hear the Am as tonic: Am F G Am Am G F Em Am Am Dm Am Em Am This tendency for either C or Am to sound like the tonic has sponsored a lot of music that modulates (shifts the tonic emphasis) between the relative major and minor. It's very common to start a piece off based on the major, shift to minor part way through and shift back to major for the end. The opposite is also common... start minor, shift to major, end minor. Try this: C F G C - C F G C - Am Em Am Dm - Am F G C You can make other chords in the group sound like the tonic as well, but it takes a little more work to do so. The C and Am just seem to be made for the job more than the other chords. This sponsored the concept of keys with the minor key being built on the 6th degree of the major key and both sharing the same key signature. --------------------------------------- Now, once you have the idea that the tonic can be either major or minor, you start seeing them as separate entities. One way of doing this that composers discovered is modulating to the parallel minor instead of the relative minor... starting on C major, shifting to C minor, shifting back to C major. Composers also began adding diatonic and non-diatonic notes to the harmony and melody to further strengthen the major and minor tonic. In the major key, adding an F note to the G chord (G7 chord) seemed to push that chord towards the tonic (C chord). In the minor key they discovered the same tendency by changing the G note to G# and adding the D note to the E chord (E7). In parallel this simply means that you can use a G7 chord to set up either C major or C minor. In classical theory language this is presented as: Any note can be made to sound like the tonic. This establishes the key. There are two common modes/scales used to determine the tonality of the key... major and minor. Although there are a few common major and minor scales that are used more than others, any mode/scale/chord can potentially be used within a key without weakening the sense of tonic. This includes using the entire chromatic scale within a given key. A brilliant example of this is Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumble Bee" where he takes a melody that is pretty much a chromatic frenzy and grounds it in solid minor key harmony. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QV1RGMLUKE Last edited by FwL; 06-25-2017 at 01:35 PM. |
#39
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I sure am glad I started this thread! Thanks to all who contributed such instructive answers!
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#40
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I used to be all confused about the relative minor to a major scale, but then when you play it, even though it's the same notes, it does sound different because of the root. Here's a good video that shows popular songs originally recorded in major, transposed into the minor scale. The guy is silly as hell but there's good playing.
https://youtu.be/DzGSRI827IQ |