The Ear Training Lab

How To Play

In this game you'll be played a major or a minor triad, distinguish which it is, and then select the corresponding button - you can also use your keyboard's left and right arrow keys to make your selection.

What are Major and Minor Triads?

Triads are three-note chords, and the most common of these are major and minor triads - they form the harmonic basis of the vast majority of all Western music, so correctly identifying them is an incredibly useful, fundamental skill.

Both chord types begin from a root note, and then follow specific formulas up to the next two notes.

Major and Minor Triad Formulas

To create a major or minor triad we can begin on any note, and we call this the 'root' note. We then follow a specific formula travelling up in pitch to the second note in the chord, and to the third note in the chord. The note we begin on, the root, is the note the chord is named after, and the formula we follow is the tonality the chord is named after. Ie if we begin on the note 'C' and follow the 'major triad' formula we will make a C Major chord! Similarly, if we start on the note Bb and follow the 'minor triad' formula we will make a Bb minor chord.

The major formula looks like this:

1st note (+ major 3rd) 2nd note (+ minor 3rd) 3rd note.
Or
1st note (+4 semitones) 2 (+3 semitones) 3
Or
X (+4) Y (+3) Z

And the minor formula looks like this:

1st note (+ minor 3rd) 2nd note (+ major 3rd) 3rd note.
Or
1st note (+3 semitones) 2 (+4 semitones) 3
Or
X (+3) Y (+4) Z

Let's apply both formulas beginning from the note C:

C Major = C (+4) E (+3) G

C Minor = C (+3) Eb (+4) G

And here are two diagrams showing both chords being created, with an animation travelling up from the root note and following each different formula to the 2nd and 3rd notes of the chords. Click the images to trigger the animation from the start with the audio.

We can apply the formulas to any of the other notes on the piano to make all the other major and minor triads. For example:

As you can see here, where chords have the same root note, it is only the middle note that changes, they each share the same third note. Hint* We do not refer to notes within a chord by the number in which they sequentially appear, ie in C Major, which is the notes C, E and G we do not refer to E, which is sequentially the second note of the chord, as the 2nd. Instead we refer to each note via it's scale degree number relative to the root. More on this below under A Note On Note Naming / Numbering Convensions.

Comparing Major and Minor Triads

Because both chord types always use their own specific formulas, the relationship / distances between all of the notes within a single chord of the same type always stay the same, that is to say the middle note of any major chord will always be the same distance away from the 1st note. This means all major chords share a similar tonality or 'sound', as do all minor chords. It is this distinct tonality or sound which we use to differentiate the two.

Below are a series of minor triads and a series of major triads. Play each row and see if you can hear a similar tonality or feeling shared between all the minor chords, and another tonality or feeling shared between the major chords:

How Do We Tell The Sounds Apart?

We need a way to tell these different sounds / tonalities apart. We could start to train ourselves simply through exposure and repetition to gradually become more familiar with the sounds, however you've probably already had hours of subconscious training with exactly this. Because these two chord types form the basis of the majority of harmony in Western music, if we grow up listening to Western music we're often exposed to these sounds, even if only subconsciously, for hundreds or thousands of hours inside of music that has deep emotional context. During this time our brains will recognise patterns and tie these emotional contexts and feelings to these specific sounds, and we can use these contexts - that is 'how the sounds make us feel' - to identify each - and this may be a skill you already have without knowing! As with anything emotional it is a subjective experience and will vary from person to person, but a common typical (though simplified) manifestation of this might be to say that:

'minor chords sound 'sadder' than major chords'.

Explaining this in text is a tricky thing to do, so here are two chords, both with the same root note, 'C'. Compare the two and see if one sounds 'sadder' than the other.

Let's compare some other different pairs that share the same root note:

How do these sound to you? How does each make you feel? Is one sadder? And if not but you can hear that they sound different is there another emotional cue you can find that fits?

Other emotional contexts that you may hear other people describing:

Major chords are often said to sound more grand, or happier, or more peaceful or upbeat.

Minor chords are often said to sound sadder, but maybe to you they feel a bit more creepy, or unsettling, or less peaceful, less at rest, more muted, or lower?

Why Is Identifying Them Important?

There are a couple of very useful reasons why differentiating between major and minor chords is incredibly useful.

Firstly most Western music is within one major key at any one time. That major key contains 7 unique notes which make 7 different chords - 3 of these are major chords, 3 are minor chords and one is diminished, which is used more rarely. Therefore if we know what key a piece of music is in, and we know that a major chord is playing that narrows us down from 12 possible chords to 3 that are very likely.

Secondly, chord sequences take us through major and minor chords - we move through the tonalities and the emotional contexts that each give - and how we do that, where we begin, where we come to rest, and a whole host of other things, create the 'emotional journey' (for lack of a better phrase) that we travel through. It is the colour on the musical canvas if we want to sound a bit avant garde. Having an appreciation for the differences in feeling of pairings of different types of chords can help us to create emotion and movement in a more informed way, and that's probably a good thing.

A Note On Note Naming / Numbering Convensions

Sometimes the notes of a triad or chord are referred to as a number, ie the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th etc. Importantly these numbers do NOT represent the sequencial position of a note within the chord, ie if we take C Major, which is the notes C, E and G we would not refer to these as C=1, E=2 and G=3. Instead, notes are referred to by their scale degree above the root note of the chord.

For example, in the chord C Major, the root note is C, then the next note 'E' is actually the third note (3rd scale degree) in the C Major scale and so we call it the 3rd. G (which is the third note within the chord) is the 5th scale degree in the C Major scale, and so we call it the 5th.