When playing in a minor key, will the chords be minor as well?

Question

I've been jumping into music theory myself and I've been stumbling on creating certain melodies and such. I've played guitar all my teenage life and not once have I ever sat down and said I'm going to play in a certain key and write a song off of it. I just played chords till they sounded good together. Now that I've started to play piano I want to make a song/melody within a certain key.

Maybe I'm just confusing myself or just haven't learned scales and chord progressions further. But my question is if I play in D minor, will those chords (triads) be in minor as well? Like I should be playing Dm and not D?

It might be obvious but I don't know why I'm hung on this. Thanks!

Answer 1

When you play in D minor, the scale -- that is your "palette" of notes -- is: D, E, F, G, A, B♭, and C

You'll find it's not possible to play a D major chord using those notes. D major contains an F♯.

The simplest way to find the chord you want is to identify its root note, then play a triad starting on that note, using only the notes in the scale.

So

• if the accompanying bass note in your head is D, play D, F, A -- that's a D minor.
• if the accompanying bass note in your head is C, play C, E, G -- that's a C major.

If you've been writing music with no background in theory, it's possible you've broken this rule, and it still sounds good. That's fine. They're not "rules", they're conventions, and they're conventions that are broken from time to time. So if the "maths" says you should play a minor, but a major sounds right to you, by all means stick with the major.

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Footnote: That's a the "natural minor" scale. There is also the "harmonic minor" in which the 7th is sharpened - so C♯ here - and the "melodic minor" in which the 7th is sometimes sharpened, and sometimes not, largely at the composer's whim. And there are other scales which are considered minor because the 3rd is 3 semitones from the root, but are less common in Western music. But understand how things work with the "natural" scale before worrying about these. The important thing is that generally a scale is restricted to 7 notes from the 12 available, and if you play triads from that palette of 7, you'll find that a mixture of major and minor chords "automatically" happen.

Answer 2

It's a great question that reveals the ambiguity of a word like "key."

A simple - but slightly vague - answer is that minor keys do involve major chords as well as minor chords. In fact, the most important chord that really makes D minor (aside from D minor, of course!) is major: A major is the "dominant" chord of D minor.

If you understand what that means, then you're on your way to understanding how the tonic-dominant relationship makes music really be "in" a key; it helps to understand not just scales, but harmony, which does't mean just "chords."

Suggestion: listen to music in minor keys to help enrich your hearing. You will find major chords as well as minor chords.

Eleanor Rigby is a great example of a minor key song with some major key-ish notes and chords:

(Technical aside: it actually lacks a strong dominant chord!)

Answer 3

To make it simple answer we make equation key = scale and minor = natural minor.

So if You want to have song build solely from the chords in minor key (let stick to the D minor) then:

1. Your scale will be: D E F G A Bb C
2. Basic triad chords made up of scale notes will be: Dm Em F Gm Am Bb C

To make it more complex using this chords, you can end up with major sounding tune as the same notes are in F major scale (with the same chords) i.e. play F, Bb and C = major tune

So generally not only notes and chords determine tonality, but also which chord with relation to others you choose - but for this You better give yourself some lessons on harmony. In this case learning scales and chords build from them should be your starting point.

Answer 4

As a guitarist, you're probably used to playing a couple of 'minor' notes against major chords, e.g. in a bar of D major (D F# A) we often use D, F, A and C natural to give a 'bluesy' feel to the solo.Think D pentatonic minor - it's used lots and lots ! The blues just bends or breaks conventional rules. Just consider the 'Hendrix' chord, which effectively plays a major and minor chord at the same time - D F# A C E# - I've called it E# rather than F (minor third) as it's D7#9. So the answer is yes, it's o.k.-the sound you make should be more important than its correctness in official music rules terms!

Answer 5

When you play in a minor key, you usually are playing in a major key, but using one of the minor chords as a tonal center. And no, you don't just play minor chords, you end up creating chord progressions that are similar to the types of progressions you make in a major key and are often the same chords. The difference is whether or not you "focus" on that minor chord and "resolve to" that minor chord.

I mean you can basically continue doing what you're doing, playing by ear and figuring out which chords in the major key lead to that minor chord. Or you can pick up a book on harmony or take a college course in harmony, which will open it up for you and provide you with a better understanding of what's going on.

Answer 6

A scale starts on a note which may or may not be the first note you play so to imply that playing in Dm is so complicated isn't fair,start first with your corresponding Maj key which is three half steps above your minor key so in this case it would be F Maj as 1 when you do it you start on Dm forget that it's minor, just your pattern will be whole half whole whole half whole whole which will give you D E F G A Bb C D. F Maj pattern is whole whole half whole whole whole half whole which gives you F G A Bb C D E F.

Now if you start in the key of C which has no sharps or flats and minor a scale, move up 7 half steps to G which is your next key and you will use the same pattern to find which notes to sharp, all of music is based around the same 12 notes B-c and E-F don't have sharps or flats between them for the guitar each string starts on the note you have as it is open so from an E string it goes E F F# G G# A A# B C C# D D# and on the 12th fret you start over on E.

Maybe you already knew that is how you start figuring out your scales for lead, back to your question for each key scale as long as your notes that you choose for your progression are in that range for example C scale 1234567 you can play whatever note you want in that range and you are in C. So if your follow that which I showed earlier as long as you are in the range from Dm scale and play your Dm as tonic then you are playing in Dm you don't even have to play it as tonic it doesn't matter. I would recommend figuring out the patterns and scale for each key if you count from C 7 half steps to G then D and so on use the same patterns to get your scale and practice each individual key you will have it figured out in no time.