Why are Minor Chord Songs so rare?

it's certainly not unusual for a song to be written using exclusively major chords there are literally hundreds of songs that don't use anything but major chords but the same can't be said for minor Chords it's actually very unusual to find a song that only uses minor chords I've only been able to find a handful of examples 505 by the Arctic Monkeys is an example of a song that only uses minor chords switching between E minor and D minor for the entire song I'm going back a 55 if it's a call out my name by the weekend is similar simply switching between a flat minor and E flat minor for the entire [Applause] [Music] song get the party started by Pink stays on just one chord for the whole song B minor I'm coming I'm coming up so you better let this as you can see this is quickly turning into a video about songs that only use one or two chords it seems that any song that only uses minor chords has to keep harmonic movement to an absolute minimum and therefore you only get one or two chords in the entire song Run Through the Jungle by Credence clear water revival sticks on D minor for the entire [Music] tune it's also true political world by Bob Dylan stays on F minor for the whole song live in a if we expand our search to include Minor 7 chords then we do get a few more examples Sing by Ed Sheran Vamps between a flat minor and d flat minor 7 for the entire [Music] song Moves Like Jagger by Maroon five is similar moving from B- 7 to eus 7 throughout Falling by Alicia Keys is based entirely on a move from E minor to B minor 7 Family Affair by Mary J blig is a similar example moving from C minor to shus 7 for the entire tune Chain of Fools by arua Franklin almost stays on C Minor 7 for the entire tune but we actually get a brief C7 at the [Music] beginning Ain't No Sunshine by Bill Withers is largely built from minor chords but it does feature these brief G major chords and although brief these major chords are quite important to the song because they're cadency us back to a [Music] minor away so why is it difficult to write a song just using minor chords in most songs the chord progression utilizes what is called functional Harmony this is the idea that chords in a progression have functions let's look at a very typical example the famous four chords the first chord in the progression is the one chord the tonic when you're on the one everything sounds stable and grounded it's like we're at home we don't want to go anywhere but of course the the progression wouldn't have much of a sense of movement if we just stayed here on the one so the progression moves to five the dominant the function of the dominant cord is to introduce tension and a sense of movement because it wants to resolve back to the root that's what five cords do they want to resolve back to one if we did resolve back here to the tonic going from 5 to one we'd have what's called a perfect Cadence a resolution from the dominant chord to the tonic chord but to stretch out this progression instead of resolving back to one now we instead move to the sixth chord rather than being called a perfect Cadence this move from 5 to six is instead called a deceptive Cadence or an interrupted Cadence but of course we want our progression to keep moving forward so we move to the four chord the subdominant the subdominant is like the more patient version of the dominant both the subdominant and the dominant want to resolve back to the tonic to the one so that's what happens when the core progression repeats the four resolves back to the one and this is what's called a plagal Cadence a move from the four chord the subdominant to the one chord the tonic so that's why the famous four chords work together but what does that have to do with minor chords well the thing that made this chord progression works so well the thing that made it functional is the cadences we had this deceptive or interrupt Cadence resolving us from five to six and we had a plagal Cadence resolving us from the four at the end back around to the one at the start and although our example didn't feature one we could have also had the perfect Cadence a move from five to one these are by far the three most common cadences that you get in all of music and there is one thing that almost all cadences feature a major chord so therefore if you're writing a song that only uses minor chord you can't really use any cadences and because ultimately you need cadences to have functional Harmony that means that if you want to write a song that doesn't have anything but minor chords the harmony is just going to sound quite static and one-dimensional some music though purposefully avoids using functional Harmony it doesn't want a sense of harmonic movement instead the sense of movement and sense of development is going to come from different elements of the music funk music for example notoriously stays on one chord for minutes on end because the focus of the music isn't meant to be the harmony it's meant to be the [Music] [Music] Rhythm in a similar way to funk music rap music also often avoids chord progressions instead using a sample or a loop and these Loops are often built from just one or two minor chords rap's harmonic Simplicity is intentional as to move the focus away from the Harmony and onto the lyrics and the rhythm of the rapping got the cating music that beating you just I'm beginning to feel like a rap R another style where you can often find music based just on minor chords is modal Jazz modal jazz is based on the principle of avoiding functional Harmony in the first half of the 20th century Jazz traditionally featured Rich highly functional chord progressions with clear cadences but around the end of the 1950s artists like Miles Davis Bill Evans and John col train began writing music which simply vamped on one or two chords for the entire song these vamped chords weren't even really treated like chords they were more treated like key centers and the music's sense of development and expression would then come from exploring different modes and scales over those key centers So What by Miles Davis is a great example of this it spends almost 9 Minutes vamping on D Minor 7 and E flat minor [Music] 7 when we're on the D Minor 7 it's effectively like we're in the key Center of D and that's it there's no further cords and likewise when we move up to E flat minus 7 now E flat is the key center now before I claim that so what only uses minor chords I must mention that it has actually got a 30second intro in which we get some different chords including major chords so strictly speaking it's not an an example of purely minor chords in a piece of music it does come very close though and there is actually another modal jazz piece by JN Co train called Impressions which is harmonically identical to so what apart from it doesn't have that 30-second intro so Impressions by JN c train does stick exclusively to M [Music] Accords ultimately the reason why it's so hard to songs that only use minor chords is because in practice even just the brief use of a major chord can really enhance a song for example The Imperial March by John Williams comes very close to only using minor chords these Loosely related minor chords are actually one of the main elements that gives The Imperial March its disconcerting and unnerving sound here though rather than the EF flat minor that we've had so far we briefly get an efat [Music] major to me this brief bit of major gives the piece a sense of opening up it makes it sound more epic and powerful and considering that this theme is meant to represent Darth Vader you could even go as far to say that this brief use of the major chord represents the small amount of good that is left in Darth Vader I know there is good in you the emperor hasn't driven it from you fully so to find the examples in this episode I did troll through a lot of sheet music and a lot of cord websites and even then I'm still fairly sure there's going to be plenty of examples that I missed of songs that only use mine Accords so if any examples jump to mind for you do put them in the comments below because I'd love to see what I missed and as always a massive thank you goes to all of my patreons including the names you see on screen right now and Adam Granger Andre science diager Andrew Brown Andy Deacon Austin Barrett Bob mckinstry Britney Parker Chris Cabell Kieran bennon Daniel long Daryl Darren Harvey David Defender Diego Giuliani Elena schenko esben Hansen Eugene Leroy eyes FD Hodor George Taylor golf house Gil L Mo Leona James Koo J cockin sparer Joe vasson Jonas sodon Jonathan Banks Justin Vier Meg fellows Melody composer Squad Nancy Gillard Nicholas Orlando Bernard Paul Miller Paul pael Peter duny Roger clay snitchel craft Steve Daly Summer Ray T Newport Tim Beaker toot and Vladimir [Music] kov [Music]

Channel: David Bennett Piano

Views: 708,253

Keywords: minor chords, music theory, explained, functional harmony, funk, rap, modal jazz, major chords, cadence, plagal cadence, david bennett, perfect cadence, roman numeral, two chord songs, one chord song, three chord trick, analysis, minor triad, the famous four chords, why are, axis of awesome

Id: xnoxNEgOw-s

Length: 12min 2sec (722 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 17 2019