A Quick Introduction to Minor Key Chord Relationships

In my quick introduction to chord relationships in major keys, we surveyed the six common major key chords and associated them each with a distinctive image.

In this post, we’ll be taking the same approach with minor key chords. The minor key is a little more complex, but the model described here should help you quickly get started writing minor key chord progressions.

Keep in mind that these images are just one way to visualize and remember the chords in a key.

The Six Common Chords in a Minor Key

We can label the chords in a key with Roman numerals. Each Roman numeral is associated with a chord with its own tendencies and qualities.

An uppercase Roman numeral means a major chord. Lowercase means a minor chord.

Here’s an example of the six common chords in the key of A minor. A complete list of all minor keys can be found at the end of the post.

Let’s take a quick look at each chord position, explaining the associated images as we go.

The Home Chord

The i chord acts as home in a minor key song. We can start from this chord and treat it as a target.

You can think of this chord as the center of your song, though you are free to move as far away from it as you choose.

The Magnet Chord

In major keys, I call the V chord the “magnet chord” because it pulls us strongly toward the home chord.

In minor keys, if we stick with just the notes of the minor scale, the major V chord is replaced by a minor v chord. Think of this minor chord as a Dark Magnet. It still pulls us toward the home chord (in this case the i chord), but in a subtler and moodier way.

The interesting thing is that we can also use the major V chord in a minor key song. In fact, in a minor key, the major V takes on a much brighter feel than in a major key.

Let’s call it the Bright Magnet Chord.

Not only does the major V chord pull us more strongly back to the home chord, but it also helps establish that we are really in a minor key. This is useful because minor keys in popular music can be more unstable than major keys.

The Shadowy Neighborhood Chord

If the magnet chords tend to move us toward home, the minor iv chord tends to move us away from home. We can think of it as the shadowy neighborhood around our shadowy minor key home.

The minor iv can be treated as a secondary destination. It can also lead to the v or V chord.

And it can take us home with less inevitability than the magnet chords.

It’s worth adding that a major IV is also somewhat common in minor key songs, but we’re going to ignore it for now for simplicity’s sake.

The core minor key chords

Together, the i, iv, v, and V chords make up the core chords of the minor key.

These chords are enough to firmly establish we are in a minor key. And you can actually write complete songs with these chords alone.

Let’s take a higher level look at how they function together:

Always keep in mind that in popular music, any chord can lead to any other chord. This diagram illustrates some of the common tendencies and expectations in minor keys.

The red line indicates a strong perceived pull. The black lines represent some of the expectations our listeners might have.

The Steel Chord

The bVII chord plays an important role in many minor key songs. It can take us confidently away from the home chord and also bring us back. One way to imagine it is as a kind of reinforcing steel.

To get a feel for how it can seem to “back up” the home chord, try playing i and bVII back and forth.

Use the bVII instead of a magnet chord. Or use it as part of a walking progression (such as to the bVI, to be discussed next).

The Stylish Twin Chord

The bVI chord is a kind of stylish twin to the i chord.

What do I mean by this? First, you can play the bVI instead of the i chord because they share 2 out of 3 notes with each other. In this respect they are like twins.

But the bVI chord is major and brings a bright sound to a minor key. You can think of it as a flashy sibling to our home chord.

It can prolong our sense of home but with a change in color.

Of course, it does a lot more than stand in for the i chord. One way it’s commonly used is walking up to the bVII or down to the v (or V).

Take a look at some of the relationships we’ve surveyed so far between the i, v, V, bVII, and now the bVI chord:

The magnet chords pull us strongly toward home. The bVII has a subtler pull home. The bVI and bVII can walk back and forth and down to the v or V.

The Perfect Twin Chord

This brings us to the last chord we’ll discuss, the bIII chord. The bIII is often known as the relative major chord. This is why I’m using the same symbol that I used for the home chord in a major key.

Here we see it along with that other twin we’ve already discussed. In a musical context, we can’t call them triplets↗(opens in a new tab), so we’ll have to make do.

One way to think of the bIII in the minor key context is as a too-perfect twin of our home chord. That’s because it has a strong tendency to assert itself as the “real” home chord.

This happens because the bIII is the relative major. And as I mentioned earlier, minor keys can be more unstable than major keys.

So if you want to firmly root your song in a minor key, you need to treat this perfect twin carefully or it might steal the show.

Some common uses for the bIII are to prolong the home chord or to walk to the iv. You can also take advantage of its assertiveness and use it to modulate to the relative major key.

Tying them all together

With these ideas in mind, let’s take a look at one way to diagram all of these chords:

As mentioned above, any chord can move to any other chord in popular music. The arrows just show us some of the things our listeners might expect.

You can play with these chord relationships in any key. Here’s a table with all of the minor keys:

You might notice that I’ve mixed some flat minor keys (like Ebm) and some sharp minor keys (like C#m). That’s just because I generally stick with flat major keys on this site.

If you look at the bIII column (the relative majors), you’ll see that there are no sharps there, only flats.

Next Steps

We’ve used a similar framework to think about major key chords and now minor key chord relationships.

There are many other ways to think about chords, so don’t treat these as “the rules”. However, they can help you quickly write chord progressions and play with your listeners’ expectations.

If you’re looker for a deeper dive, you can read more about how minor key chord progressions work.