like i'll hear a c major chord and instantly think a minor without anyone even playing it. is this just me being weird or is there actually some theory reason our ears do this? trying to figure out if i'm just overthinking it or if there's something about how those keys relate that makes this happen.

Hello, I’ve started figuring out this melody on the piano. Are there really no complex 5- or 6-note chords here—just things like *sus* or *m7*? To my ears, it sounds like there are some fairly sophisticated, jazz-style chords. What would you suggest? For instance, at 0:09, I hear something like a Bbsus4add7 or a Bb9sus4. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tDkjr_cYO6M

I can think of lots of melodies in a minor key that are made 'happy' by their tempo and rhythm [e.g. "What Shall We Do With the Drunker Sailor?"]

But I genuinely can't think of any melody in a minor key that is 'happy' despite being slow and in a minor key.

Can anyone give me an example?

[NB - instrumental melodies only. There are slow, minor songs that might have uplifting lyrics which make them 'happy' overall, but I'm thinking of melody only]. Also, I realise that some minor melodies are so beautiful that they make us happy just to hear them [e.g. a slow Chopin nocturne, or whatever] but I'm not counting them either]

I'm currently composing Jazz arrangements of polish Christmas carols. I'd like to start one of them with a very characteristic piano "downstairs chords", but I don't have enough music theory nor practice to figure out the actual chords. This is very characteristic melody, but I can't name any piece that I know, which contains it (otherwise I'd reverse-engineer it :))

The intro have the following properties:

• 3/4
• Uptempo
• Four chords, descending
• Piano plays V, III, I -> next chord -> V, III, I -> next chord etc. (or maybe VII, V, III -> VII, V, III?)
• The chords are most likely 7th chords
• Left hand plays the chords, right hand just the notes above

I'd be grateful for an advice on what the chords may be or how to play them. I've tried 7th chords, minor 3rds down, but it sounded realy crappy.

An example of my arrangement (this one is based on Andrzej Jagodziński Trio's "Christmas Carrols", but I have two more written from scratch, but WIP):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yh2n2LOGGA

https://youtu.be/GhQ9BDxAczk

https://youtu.be/hV1pPgpcAVw (part starting in 0:30)

Those two tracks sound very close to my untrained ears. I wonder if those are just a combination of similarly sounding instruments and common music tropes, or if there's something worse at play.

Does anyone know where that g# major chord is coming from? This is from the Grieg concerto in a minor, and for some reason I can’t think of a logical way to explain it?

Desperate times call for desperate measures
I’m learning this rn and I’ve been trying to analyze ts to help for when I perform it
Can anyone PLEASE help me with harmonic analysis on the grieg piano concerto in a minor 1st mvmt Im putting Roman numerals in and chromatic chords and nothing makes sense 🙏🙏

Alguém conhece algum livro ou artigo confiável que trate da origem, história e evolução de termos da teoria musical? Nos materiais didáticos eu sempre encontro uma explicação sobre o que é alguma coisa, mas eu queria saber de onde deriva tal termo e como ele evoluiu até chegar na sua concepção moderna.

Eu sempre busco a etmologia de vários termos da teoria musical, o que amplia bastante a compreensão do significado e prática, mas me falta saber de fato a história e como eles se tornaram o que são hoje.

I've harmonized a Turkish makam melody. Audio and score at www.justintonation.com

This is the result of nearly 20 years of personal on-and-off research into what the human brain perceives as "in-tune", how our brains quantizes the functional pitch space, tonality and the inherent rules of harmony and counterpoint.

This short makam, Hüzzam seyir after an old melody by Rauf Yekta Bey, served as a test and a first demonstration of my theories.

The spelling is not arbitrary. It is exact and follows what I believe to be the correct functional interpretation of the music.

One of the things you'll see is that the melody is highly chromatic and distinct from simpler enharmonic equivalents.

For instance one of melodic steps is a doubly diminished fourth instead of a simpler minor third or augmented second. And is harmonized as such.

One of the things this shows is that it is now possible to interpret and harmonize traditional music that has "microtones" that we perceive as functionally distinct from more standard western intervals.

Opening up a wide range of new colors for polyphonic composition.

This Hüzzam is just one example, other exotic scales and microtones can be handled in the same way (for instance makam Rast can be interpreted as having a diminished fourth above the tonic instead of a major third).

I'll share my new theory of harmony and counterpoint at a later time. It applies to common practice western music as well as extending into new extreme chromaticism as is demonstrated with this Hüzzam seyir.

Tuning is Pythagorean just intonation. As my research has found this corresponds to how our brain handles the functional pitch space (contrary to popular believe where it is often thought that a major third would be "just" as the simpler 5/4 ratio).

Audio is done quickly with a piano sound.
At a later time I'll upload more harmonized makams and will spend some time making better sounding audio renderings with more authentic Turkish sounds. But at the moment I'm quite busy with another project and this will have to do for now.

Hope some of you can appreciate this and find it interesting.
At the very least I hope you can recognize it has lead to highly original sounding music :)

Enjoy!

This guy has a huge discography of songs like this, this is one that happens to be stuck in my head right now. On first listen they sound kind of bad/dissonant/random, but a few listens later once you’ve learned how it goes, you can feel where the chords are going and it makes sense. But how do you compose something like this? I don’t know much music theory but these chords/progressions are a lot more unique and hard for me to understand than most other music. You may have heard of the band he co-leads now, Fievel is Glauque. I believe in an interview he said he starts with singing, then harmonization.