When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Credit: Michael Putland/Getty Images In theory, the name of a chord should describe its content, ...

A little knowledge with naming conventions goes a long way to understanding complex chords and how they might sound ...

Daniel Levitin, in his popular bestseller entitled This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession from 2006, characterizes the perception of the minor chord, which lowers the third of a ...

A lot of the elements that make pop music successful relate to it being catchy and familiar. As a songwriter, there are many ways to engender this feeling in listeners, to do with song structure, ...

Dwang. Dwang. Dwang. Dwang. Dwang. Dwang. Six dwangs. Four seconds. It's an A minor chord that sounds slightly out of tune and thinly metallic. It's a primitive, janky sound voiced in open D tuning, ...

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 ...