Could somebody give me a really basic, "for dummies" style explanation of the difference between major and minor keys?

[turquoise]

Is it just that minor plays more flats?

I dont know but will bump for you anyway. Do you mean on a piano?

Thanks
On anything I suppose - ds is learning music and asking lots of questions that I am clueless about!
How are you doing anyway?

I am coming down with something this morning and have turned into a hermit how are you?

I am sorry i am completely clueless about music even though I have grade 2 violin

Its been a while.... but is it not that major notes are a whole tone apart, but minor is a semi-tone from a major?

Poor you - look after yourself. Hope your mum's visit wasn't too stressful?

I'll email you - maybe meet up again soon if you can face the wittering!

nothing is ever that easy!!!!

Thanks Serah - a semitone being a flat or a sharp?

Thanks again, but and

The best I can manage so far for ds is "you play more black notes and it sounds more sad or wistful"..

Each note (C, C sharp/D flat, D etc.) has a major and a minor key. The minor keys drop a semitone at the (I THINK!!!) 3rd and 6th notes of the scale. So in D major you play F sharp, in d minor you play F. (Warning! Although I have music AS level, my musical knowledge is very rusty!!!)

Good god, I actually think I've got it!
Thanks

Notes are A B C D E F G and the scales refer to flats or sharps don't they? (I'm floundering too Berolina )

I think thats a good way to describe it to your son btw Turquoise.

Otherwise it just gets complicated, unless you try something along the lines of the white keys are the notes and the black keys have the little sounds inbetween (as you can see from the link it is not as easy as semi tone (or half tone). Come to think of it though, he's not going to pull you up on that one is he? How about the white keys being the tone, and the black ones being half a tone up?

A scale is all the notes in a particular key. So for C major, C-C. 8 notes.

So C major would have F, and C minor would have F sharp?

Nope - it's the third note which is minor, which means in the case of C key that E is affected. C major has E natural (i.e. neither flat nor sharp), C minor has E flat.

Whereas D major has F sharp and D minor F natural!

easiest way to work it out (using berolina's post)

Is - a "chord" of any given note has 3 notes.

The "main" note (ie C)
The "middle" note (for C major would be an E)
The "top" note (for C major would be G)

If you count up Using semitones then (if you count the main note as "1" then a major always has the middle note on "5", a minor on "4".

So C minor would be

C, E flat, and G

It's basically to do with the scales - all major scales follow a specific pattern of tones and semitones (the distance between the notes) - on the piano, if you went up from the bottom playing all the notes (white and black) in order, then you would be moving at semitone intervals. A tone is 2 semitones. So a scale of C major which is the most simple is C D E F G A B C which if you look at the semitones is T T S T T T S (because there is no black note between E and F and B and C). A minor scale also follows a given pattern of semitones - if you think about the harmonic minor scale (which is the most simple) the notes are C D Eflat F G Aflat B C which gives a pattern of
T S T T S T+ S (where TS is a tone and a half).

It's not true to say that there are more black notes in a minor key - A major has 3 sharps, where A minor has a key signature of no sharps/flats though you would play a GSharp.

That probably hasn't helped at all - you really need to look at a piano to see the tone/semitone thing. The main thing is that the sound of all the major scales is the same (because they all follow the same pattern of tones and semitones) and the same for the minors.

If I was to add that there are two types of minor scales would that help...

In first post TS should read T+

Thankyou all, I think I'm marginally less clueless now though this:
"This article may be too technical for most readers to understand. Please expand it to make it accessible to non-experts ? without removing the technical details ? and remove this notice when this has been accomplished"
bit from Serah's link certainly applies to me!

It would certainly be easier to work out with a piano.

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C D E F G A B C D E F G A B C

Does this help - the lines are the black notes, so from C, a semitone is to the black note (C Sharp), then C sharp to D is another semitone, D to the black note is another semitone etc, but E-F is a semitone because there is no black note in between, and the same for B-C. C major only uses the white notes, so the pattern is T T S T T T S - the T is when there is a black note in between.

That didn't come out at all like it should have done - I'll try again...

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C D E F G A B C D E

STILL didn't work - the computer keeps taking out the spaces!

Last go...

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C D E F G A B C D E

No still no use! I give up