The chord of F Minor

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Not for the faint-hearted

Chords have characteristics. Personalities, almost. Master composer Schubert even wrote a directory to explain this, in which he proclaimed F Minor to be the sound of “Deep depression, funereal lament, groans of misery and longing for the grave.” while another classical composer, Helmholtz, described it as “harrowing and melancholy”.

These descriptions may be several hundred years old, but go some way to explaining the morbid, sombre and abrasive nature of F Minor.

This doesn’t mean F Minor can’t be used to great effect in modern music. The abrasive nature of F Minor makes it a popular choice for Rock Music, hard dance music like Dubstep and Trap, and even epic pop songs.

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Putting the the ‘Fun’ in Funeral

F Minor is used in just 2.4% of songs analyzed on Hook Theory.com – it’s not the most common chord, and has a reputation for being morbid and even suicidal. Tracks like Adele – Hello, Ed Sheeran – Don’t and David Bowie – Starman show it can be the root of a truly global smash hit!

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Let’s analyze F Minor. Like all tonal chords, it’s generic form is a triad – or three notes played simultaneously – and it starts with it’s own root note, which is, of course, F.

The magic number

Every triad starts with the root note and ends with a perfect fifth – five whole notes up from the root. The middle note is really important as it decides whether the chord is Minor or Major. Check out this simple chart below:

F Chord Root (AKA ‘Tonic’) Interval 1 Interval 2
Minor F A Flat C
Major F A C
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The chart shows us the simple difference between F Major and F Minor. It also tells us that F Minor consists of three notes: F, G# (AKA A Flat) and C.

Relatively speaking

Every Major chord has a relative Minor chord that complements it. If you’ve ever seen the Mixed in Key Harmonic Mixing Wheel (AKA the ‘Camelot’ Wheel) you’ll be familiar with the way chords ‘connect’ based on their position on the wheel.

CamelotWheel

The outer ring has the Major chords, the inner ring has Minors. Look at the lower left side of the wheel. 4A = F Minor, and is positioned next to 4B = A Flat Major. These are ‘relative’ chords – very useful when writing chord progressions as you know they’ll sound ‘correct’ even when played on top of one another.

Minimize the Leap

When playing F Minor you can change the way it’s played and play either of the triad notes at the bottom. Check out the video example below, where you can see and hear the difference between the three ways of playing the same chord. The sound is almost the same and the pitch is identical. These are sometimes referred to as inversions.

These inversions are scored in different ways:

First Inversion

Bottom Middle Fifth
A Flat C F

Second Inversion

Bottom Middle Fifth
C F A Flat
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Why invert?

Inverting chords gives musicians different ways of playing the same chord in different positions on the keyboard – minimizing the distance between chords. That’s where the term ‘Minimize the leap’ originates – something you can easily replicate in Captain Chords.

Flavors

Flavors and Suspended Chords

We can make F Minor more complex and interesting by adding additional notes. It’s like adding spice to your chord – so be careful not to overdo it.

These additional notes come from the overall diatonic scale of the note, which takes a bit of time to learn.

Each one adds its own flavor, which is why they are sometimes referred to as flavors. It’s super simple to add these flavors in our Captain Chords software – you just select the flavor you want and audition it live within your composition.

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The diatonic scale of F Minor

Flavor:

Root Third Fifth 6th 7th 9th 11th 13th
F A Flat C D Flat E Flat G B Flat D Flat

Suspended:

Root Third Suspended 2nd Suspended 4th Fifth
F A Flat G B Flat C

There are fewer potential suspended notes, since they fit in between the root and fifth. There are two options, in fact, which makes sense if you think about it: 1 is taken by the root note, F. 3 is taken by the first interval, and 5 is taken by the perfect fifth. This leaves just 2 and 4 as possible destinations for our suspended notes.

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