New evidence for a musical phenomenon we've taken for granted for centuries: that the minor key is sadder than the major. Dido's Lament is audibly bleaker than Kylie's I Should Be So Lucky' – although ...

Like everyone else who grew up during the heyday of the show and has since had to deal with countless reruns over the last 25 years, I have heard the Friends theme song roughly a billion times. I’m ...

Each piece of music, be it a song, symphony or concerto, is written in a specific ‘key’. But what do we mean when we refer to a musical key, why are there 24 of them, and how do composers choose which ...

It’s a mysterious thing. Why do songs sound happy or sad depending on whether they’re in a major or minor key? Mathematically the two are barely distinguishable. A song in C major uses the same notes ...

This is our second story in our series on the characteristics of musical keys. We started with the “people’s key,” C major. From there it’s an easy skip to D, the root of today’s subject, the “saddest ...

"In Western music, there's nothing that says 'sad' like a minor key," explains the Exploratorium science museum. You don't have to be up on your music theory — or have synesthesia — to recognize when ...

To begin our discussion on what it is that makes minor chords sad, we will first listen to some examples of the use of minor chords and minor keys that demonstrate breathtaking power to convey deep ...

A secondary key used to identify a record. For example, if transactions are sorted by account number and date, account number is the major key and date is the minor key. THIS DEFINITION IS FOR ...

One must be careful with these kinds of psychoacoustical questions because of cultural differences and sad minor keyed songs just being what you're used to, but if there is an explanation it may have ...