To begin our investigation into the hidden cause of our peculiar perception of minor chords and keys, we will listen to a trombone quartet playing a C minor chord. We might describe the sound as "rich ...

The word ‘diatonic’ simply means ‘within a key’, so a diatonic chord progression is a set of chords made up of notes from within a key signature When you purchase through links on our site, we may ...

A normal C major chord is C-E-G, but you can easily change it to E-G-C, called the 'first inversion', or G-C-E, the 'second inversion' - the bass note has changed, but it's still the same chord, with ...

PRODUCER WEEK 2025: For today's free and easy music producers, the knotty business of music theory has always had a slight whiff of the uncool about it. Talk of Major and Minor scales conjure up ...

Much of our music, from classical to contemporary, is written in either a major or minor key (with exceptions, such as jazz, which uses neither). For most, a major key conjures up feelings of ...

Creating suspense in music can be achieved in a number of different ways, but for instant suspense gratification, there's ...

Vivek Maddala is an Emmy-winning composer and a regular participant in The Number Ones Comment Section. After reading his takes on the music theory behind several historic hits, we invited him to turn ...

Daniel Levitin, in his popular bestseller entitled This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession from 2006, characterizes the perception of the minor chord, which lowers the third of a ...