Minor piano chords
A minor chord flips the major recipe: root, minor third (three semitones), perfect fifth. C minor is C–E♭–G. Lowering the third by one semitone is all it takes to turn bright into melancholy — the interval structure 3+4 instead of 4+3.
The minor family mirrors the major one: m6 and m6/9 add sweetness, m7 is the workhorse of soul and jazz, m9 and m11 stack calmer extensions on top. The minor-major seventh (mMaj7) — a minor triad with a major seventh — is the tense, film-noir outlier worth knowing.
In a major key, the chords on the 2nd, 3rd and 6th degrees come out minor (Dm, Em and Am in C major), and in a minor key the tonic itself is minor. A huge share of pop progressions — Am–F–C–G and friends — lean on exactly these chords.
