Minor Chords

Posted by TJ on 27th March 2009 in Guitar Theory

Hi everybody, nice to see you again in this Beginner Guitar Lessons blog. Today we will learn about minor chords. Together with the major chords and the dominant 7th chords, the minor chords are commonly used almost in any kind of music, and they give different ‘feel’ to the songs. While major chords give a ‘normal’ or ‘happy’ feels, minor chords tends to sound ‘darker’, ‘somber’ or even ‘serious’.
Let us go back a little bit to the major scale structure:

natural_tones1

Each major chord has a relative minor chord. The relative minor chords are always 1 ½ steps lower and the easiest way to remember it is to find the 6th note from the scale. When we take C as the root note of the major chord the 6th note will be A. Easy to say Am is the relative minor chord of C major chord. Now you need to reshuffle the notes and start the sequence from A:

minor_tones

Here we have a new pattern: 1 – ½ – 1 – 1 – ½ – 1 – 1 or W – H – W – W – H – W – W. This is the minor chord scale.

Same as in the major chords, you should pick the first, third and fifth notes to build minor chords. Based on that A minor chord will have A, C and E notes.

What is the difference between A minor and A major?
Major chord scale is 1 – 1 – ½ – 1 – 1 – 1 – ½ or W – W – H – W – W – W – H.

Let us put A to start this scale:

a_major_tones

Again, for this A Major chord you should pick the first, third and fifth notes which are A, C# and E.

Can you see the difference between A minor and A major here? Yes, minor chords have the third notes lower by half step: A major = A – C# – E whilst A minor = A – C – E.

a_major_minor