Keys
The hallmark that distinguishes major keys from minor is whether the third scale degree is major or minor. "The crucial difference is that in the minor scale there is only a half step between the second and third tones as compared to the major scales where the difference between third and fourth note and between the seventh and the eighth note is half." This alteration in the third degree "greatly changes" the mood of the music, and "music based on minor scales tends to" be considered to "sound serious or melancholic".
Read more about this topic: Major And Minor
Famous quotes containing the word keys:
“And yet we constantly reclaim some part of that primal spontaneity through the youngest among us, not only through their sorrow and anger but simply through everyday discoveries, life unwrapped. To see a child touch the piano keys for the first time, to watch a small body slice through the surface of the water in a clean dive, is to experience the shock, not of the new, but of the familiar revisited as though it were strange and wonderful.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“McCoy: That shark’s been following us ever since the surgeon died, waiting for the burial. Couldn’t I have a musket to shoot it, sir?
Fletcher Christian: Take the deck, McCoy. I’ll get the keys to the arms chest.
McCoy: Get two muskets, sir. I’d like to shoot that shark on board.”
—Talbot Jennings (1896–1985)
“Bless all useful objects,
the spoons made of bone,
the mattress I cook my dreams upon,
the typewriter that is my church
with an altar of keys always waiting.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)