Lesson 29: Minor Key Triads
This lesson teaches minor keys and the
chords commonly
used with them.
Before taking this lesson, you should know:
Diatonic Triads
We mentioned
minor keys in
Lesson 19: Keys. A basic set of
chords we can use in a minor key are the
diatonic triads from
the key's
natural minor scale. If you understand how we found the
major-scale diatonic triads in
Lesson 22: Diatonic Triads, and you know the
natural minor scale, then I hope it's easy to understand how these
natural-minor diatonic triads work. Let's use an example to find them:
Say you want to find the diatonic triads for the
key of B minor. The
B natural minor scale consists of these pitches:
B C♯ D E F♯ G
A B
This table shows how we
construct the B-minor diatonic triads by
selecting notes from the B minor scale:
So, the
common natural-minor diatonic triads in
any minor key
are:
I ♭III IVm Vm
♭VI ♭VII
Notes:
-
Remember, I use the "Berklee Roman system"
(Lesson 20: Roman Numeral Chords).
So, for example, the triad built on degree 3 of the minor
scale is called ♭III, not III.
-
I skipped scale degree 2 for now because it's not commonly used in
pop music.
Vm vs. V Major
The
diatonic "five chord" in natural minor is
Vm, a
minor chord, as you see above. However, in
classical music (and
often in pop music too), the "five chord" that's actually
used in
minor-key music is
V, a
major chord, even though it's not
diatonic. This is because it's considered to
sound more dominant and
lead more strongly back to the tonic than the
Vm chord does.
In your minor-key song, you can use either
V or
Vm:
- V sounds more "traditional" or "classical".
- Vm sounds more "natural-minorish" or "modal".
Chord Chart
For reference, here are the
commonly used triads in each common minor
key:
Mixing Major and Minor
Major and minor keys can be mixed in the same song. There are two main ways
this is done:
- Parallel major and minor
- Relative major and minor
Parallel major and minor keys are pairs of major and minor keys
which have
the same tonic (the same "name" or "home pitch"). For
example, the keys of
B major and
B minor are a
parallel
major/minor pair.
Parallel major and minor keys are often mixed by
borrowing
chords from the parallel minor when a song is mostly in a major key. For
example:
-
Say a song is in the key of C major, and uses an E♭
("E-flat major") chord.
-
E♭ is not a diatonic chord in the key of C major, so
where does it come from?
-
The Eb chord's Roman analysis, in the key of C, is
♭III.
-
Notice that ♭III is a diatonic chord in the key of C
minor. So, this chord is borrowed from the parallel minor
key.
Relative major and minor keys have the same relationship as
relative major and minor
scales
(
Lesson 27: Natural Minor Scale);
they
use the same pitches as each other. For example, the
C major
scale and the
A natural minor scale are relative major and minor
scales; therefore, the
key of
C major and the
key
of
A minor are
relative major and minor keys.
Relative major and minor keys are often mixed by having the song
move back and forth between the major and minor keys. For example, a
song might be in the key of
C major in one section, and then be in the
key of
A minor in the next section. It can be hard to decide, when
you're analyzing a song, whether such a "relative key change" is happening at
all, since the pair of relative major and minor keys
share the same
diatonic chords.
Diatonic Functions
To understand the
different effects of these minor-key chords, you'll
want to understand their
diatonic functions (
T,
SD, or
D), like we did for
major-key diatonic chords in
Lesson 26: Diatonic Function Analysis. The diatonic
functions of the minor-key chords are not as well established as they are for
the major-key chords, but here's how I classify them:
| Chord | Function | Reason |
| Im | T |
The tonic chord |
| ♭III | (T) |
I in the relative major key |
| IVm | SD |
The subdominant chord |
| V or Vm | D |
The dominant chord |
| ♭VI | SD |
IV in the relative major key |
| ♭VII | (D) |
V in the relative major key |
Exercises
You can add these activities to your writing exercises (from
Lesson 2: Practicing Songwriting):
-
Practice playing this chord sequence, Im - ♭III
- IVm - Vm - ♭VI - ♭VII, in
different keys.
-
Analyze songs: This new set of chords will let you understand and
"Roman-label" more of the chords in songs you like, like we showed in
Lesson 26: Diatonic Function Analysis.
-
Practice using them: Make up chord progressions using these minor-key
chords.
Next:
