When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Credit: Getty Images Conventional wisdom dictates that a well-written song will stand up even ...

Popular music can be categorised into a multitude of genres, but probably the broadest are mainstream pop and R&B. This is the kind of thing you hear on the radio every day, and possibly the genres ...

Music is an incredibly powerful tap into the emotions. As an experiment, try watching the most emotional scene from any movie you can think of with the sound turned off. Without music, the emotional ...

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 ...

If there’s one thing you can do to take your songwriting to the next level, it’s getting to grips with new chords. Use our ...

Do you associate minor chords with sad music and major chords with happy music? If you do, you probably grew up surrounded by music that follows the basic rules of Western music theory. But not ...

A study suggests that minor and major seventh chords are the happiest sounds in music, but today’s songwriters are ditching them in favour of simple minor chords. But why does this matter? We all love ...

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 ...

Conventional wisdom dictates that a well-written song will stand up even when reduced to simple chords on acoustic guitar. But at some point, we’ve all heard songs in which complex or unusual chord ...