Minor Chords

Do you know that without night time you wouldn’t appreciate daytime that sunlight brings?

Major Chords do sound bright and full of energy however playing minor chords in the Mix of your Chord Progression or Song makes your music a whole lot of a better experience.

Minor Chords adds that dark and sad  sound to the music thereby making you appreciate Major Chords even better.

The Minor Chord Formula : Root + minor 3^rd + Perfect 5^th (1 b3 5)

This is very easy to interpret on the Keyboard

To get a D minor Triad;

1. Begin by finding the root note of the Chord. In this case D is the Root Note, hence it will be the starting note of the D minor Triad. If we were for an A minor Triad, it will definitely start with the “A” note
2. Next, count three half steps (1 and a half step) from the root note D to find the minor 3^rd (b3 or flat 3). I guess you arrived at F (that is correct) and this note gives the chord the minor quality.
3. Finally, count up seven half steps from the root note to find the perfect 5^th (you get A). This adds stability and richness to the chord.
4. Play all three notes together to have the full D minor triad (D+F+A)

Below are all the 12 minor Triads on the Piano. You may want to save for practice reference.

All Minor Triads

NB: As an exercise, please try and see how we arrived at these minor chords using the minor chord formula.

Are you also wondering about the fingering for minor triads?

Use same fingering as you did for Major Chords.

1-3-5 (on the right hand)

5-3-1 (on the left hand)

Secondary Chords

Before we proceed it’s worth mentioning that secondary chords are minor chords that belongs to a specific key.

Remember we stated that the Primary Chords are Major Chords on the 1st, 4th and 5th position of any Major Scale.

On the other hand, the Secondary Chords are minor chords on the 2nd, 3rd and 6th degree of any Major Key.

Hence in the Key of C major for instance:

D minor chord (the 2 chord) , E minor chord (the 3 chord) and A minor chord (the 6 chord) are Secondary Chords in the key of C major.

Drill:

• Write out the Secondary chords in Key F major, E major and Ab major respectively.