The Seven Harmonies in Minor Mode

The minor scale also contains seven harmonies within it, and again they are the triads built on each of the seven notes of the scale. The difference is that the mode of each harmony is different from the major scale: 1 is minor, 2 is diminished, 3 is major, etc. Here is the full list for both major and minor:

	major scale or key	minor scale or key
1	major	minor
2	minor	diminished
3	minor	major
4	major	minor
5	major	minor
6	minor	major
7	diminished	major

You can see that almost everything in a minor key is the opposite of what it is in a major key... (brain twister coming) Where a harmony is major in the major scale, it is minor in the minor scale, and where it is minor in the major scale, it is major in the minor scale, with the exception of the diminisheds. (Read that again.) Note in particular that 4 and 5 are minor now.

Relative major and minor keys

If you take any given major key, its relative minor is the minor key that uses the same notes. As an example the relative minor to C major is A minor. And it works the other way; the relative major to A minor is C major. The relative major to E minor is G major.

Hearing harmonies in minor mode

Let's say you are listening to a song that is in A minor, and there is a C major chord somewhere. As a music theorist you might want to identity what harmony it is. You might hear it as 3 of A minor, or you might hear it as 1 of the relative major. It doesn't matter how you think of it; you can think of it either way. This is the kind of thing that music theorists argue about unnecessarily; but it is worth noting that 3 in a minor key happens a lot more often than 3 in a major key, possibly lending credence to the "relative major" theory.

Similary if there is a G major chord while in the key of A minor, you can hear it as either 7 of A minor, or as 5 of the relative major.

Another point is that the major version of 5 is often heard in a minor key instead of the more natural minor chord. In A minor, this means that instead of E minor, you will often hear E major in its place, to create a stronger dominant energy.

An example

Below are the words to "Greensleeves", a minor mode song from the Tudor period of English history, along with the minor mode harmonies.

Alas, my love, you	do me wrong,
1	7
To cast me off, dis-	courteously.
4	5
For I have loved you	well and long,
1	7
Delighting	in your	company.
4	5 major	1

Greensleeves was	all my joy,
3	7
Greensleeves was	my delight,
4	5
Greensleeves was my	heart of gold, and
3	7
Who but my	lady	Greensleeves.
4	5 major	1

Again, in this song 3 can be thought of as 1 of the relative major, and 7 can be thought of as 5 of the relative major. In the chorus the first and third lines sound very much like a brief modulation to the relative major.

The note range of the melody is note 6 above the tonic down to note 5 below the tonic. Being aware that the comfortable range for most voices is approximately the octave from A to A, you might use a key like D minor or E minor to sing it. In E minor the chords would be:

Alas, my love, you	do me wrong,
e minor	D major
To cast me off, dis-	courteously.
a minor	b minor
For I have loved you	well and long,
e minor	D major
Delighting	in your	company.
a minor	B major	e minor/td>

Greensleeves was	all my joy,
G major	D major
Greensleeves was	my delight,
a minor	b minor
Greensleeves was my	heart of gold, and
G major	D major
Who but my	lady	Greensleeves.
a minor	B major	e minor

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