Ear Training Tip: Have you ever heard somebody say that major sounds happy and minor sounds sad? In general – and in narrow terms, that would be correct. But in broader terms and in context, that may not be the case.

Let me show you what I mean:

#A25

Ear Training w Ari: Context is Everything

Video Transcript

Have you ever heard somebody say that major sounds happy and minor sounds sad? Okay, I can get on board with that somewhat. If you hear it back to back, minor… major yeah, I hear that this is a minor chord – sounds a bit sad.

And this is a major chord – sounds happier. Okay fine. so far so good. Now gets a bit trickier if I mess with the context. For example, if you hear [🎵] right after this you probably say oh yeah yeah, that’s minor, right? Because I made your ear recognize that E as the root.

Okay, but listen now… [🎵] Oooh, now it’s turned into major. I can turn major into minor just the same. Major [🎵] … turns minor. All of a sudden that E to the G sharp turned into a C sharp minor triad.