Major and minor
In Western music, the adjectives major and minor may describe an interval, chord, scale, or key. A composition, movement, section, or phrase may also be referred to by its key, including whether that key is major or minor.
This article is about the musical concept. For the academic disciplines, see Academic major and Academic minor.The words derive from Latin words meaning "large" and "small," and were originally applied to the intervals between notes, which may be larger or smaller depending on how many semitones (half-steps) they contain. Chords and scales are described as major or minor when they contain the corresponding intervals, usually major or minor thirds.
Intervals[edit]
A major interval is one semitone larger than a minor interval. The words perfect, diminished, and augmented are also used to describe the quality of an interval. Only the intervals of a second, third, sixth, and seventh (and the compound intervals based on them) may be major or minor (or, rarely, diminished or augmented). Unisons, fourths, fifths, and octaves and their compound interval must be perfect (or, rarely, diminished or augmented). In Western music, a minor chord "sounds darker than a major chord".[1]
Major and minor may also refer to scales and chords that contain a major third or a minor third, respectively.
Keys[edit]
The hallmark that distinguishes major keys from minor is whether the third scale degree is major or minor. Major and minor keys are based on the corresponding scales, and the tonic triad of those keys consist of the corresponding chords; however, a major key can encompass minor chords based on other roots, and vice versa.
As musicologist Roger Kamien explains, "the crucial difference is that in the minor scale there is only a half step between '2nd and 3rd note' and between '5th and 6th note' as compared to the major scales where the difference between '3rd and 4th note' and between '7th and 8th note' is [a half step]."[1] This alteration in the third degree "greatly changes" the mood of the music, and "music based on minor scales tends to" be considered to "sound serious or melancholic,"[1] at least to contemporary Western ears.
Minor keys are sometimes said to have a more interesting, possibly darker sound than plain major scales.[2] Harry Partch considers minor as, "the immutable faculty of ratios, which in turn represent an immutable faculty of the human ear."[3] The minor key and scale are also considered less justifiable than the major, with Paul Hindemith calling it a "clouding" of major, and Moritz Hauptmann calling it a "falsehood of the major".[3]
Changes of mode, which involve the alteration of the third, and mode mixture are often analyzed as minor changes unless structurally supported because the root and overall key and tonality remain unchanged. This is in contrast with, for instance, transposition. Transposition is done by moving all intervals up or down a certain constant interval, and does change the key but not the mode, which requires the alteration of intervals. The use of triads only available in the minor mode, such as the use of A♭-major in C major, is relatively decorative chromaticism, considered to add color and weaken the sense of key without entirely destroying or losing it.