Welcome to fun with three strings! Today’s episode is called C a minor difference and we’re looking at c minor chord.
The three strings I’m using today are the D, G, and B those are my three strings.
On the 8th and 10th frets
If i come up to the 10th fret of that D string there’s my C note. E flat underneath on the 8th fret and G below it.
C, E flat, and G are the three notes of the C minor triad.
I want to talk about the difference between a C minor and a C major.
And what’s the difference between a major and minor chord?
It sounds different that’s the first thing. A major chord is more bright and cheery, a minor chord is more kind of like mellow and and chill. From a musical perspective here’s the chord I was playing; C on the 10th fret, E flat and the G there on the eighth fret.
The minor difference is if i simply move the yellow up one fret I’ve now got a C major
I’m going up one fret with the yellow color, which is the third if you recall from my rainbow chakra system.
Red is one
Yellow is three
Blue is five
In this case we’re just taking that third and it’s either going to go up a half step or down half step.
If we have it up a half step it’s a C major and if we drop it back just a half step we got a C minor.
Some people would call that a flat third so simply a matter of the third being a half step lower in a minor chord versus where it would be in a major chord.
We got a c minor on the musical staff here. C, E flat and a G
Now if i took this flat away it would make it a regular C chord – C major.
So you you can see the simple difference. C minor has an E flat and C major has a natural E note. That’s just a half a step difference in one note of the chord. Remember a half step is just one fret away on the guitar fretboard.
now you can see it over here in the circle of fifths also the circle of infinite imagination we got c in red at the root g and five is the fifth right the circle of fifths it increments by a fifth every time you go a step clockwise right so c is the root g is the fifth in blue and that’s the same for a major chord right these two whether it’s major or minor these two are the same right now where it varies is the third in the yellow so we have e flat for the c minor chord now if it was a c major you’re pointing over here at regular e
We can jump all the way up here to the 12th fret where we got G at the 12th fret, on the G string 12th fret. Then we just put a finger above and below on the other strings and we got C minor there. We get the third on top we got the fifth on the 12th fret and the root in red there on the 13th fret of the B string. That’s the B string and an octave it’s B and then the next note up is C.
So grab your guitar and begin playing with C minor and C major chords
Thanks for joining with fun with three strings where it makes it easy on your fingers easy on your brain.
