Minors

mi·nor
[mahy-ner]
adjective, noun
1. lesser, as in size, extent, or importance, or being or noting the lesser of two: a minor share.
2. not serious, important, etc.: a minor wound; a minor role.
3. having low rank, status, position, etc.: a minor official.
4. under the legal age of full responsibility.
5. Education . of or pertaining to a field of study constituting a student's minor.
6. Music
a. (of an interval) smaller by a chromatic half step than the corresponding major interval.
b. (of a chord) having a minor third between the root and the note next above it.
7. of or pertaining to the minority.
8. ( initial capital letter ) (of two male students in an English public school who have the same surname) being the younger or lower in standing: Jackson Minor sits over here.

Seems it can be a adjective or a noun, in this case, I'm talking about music. An newish friend of mine, a neighbor of sorts (he lives in the same neighborhood) who is really into music came to our house about a while back, we discussed among a lot of things, music. He plays acoustic guitar (very well I might add), I happen to really enjoy listening to acoustic guitar too... I played a bit of piano for him, he seemed to enjoy it, I was nervous though, it's not easy for me to play in front of people, though it's getting easier and easier. He mentioned that he would like to jam with me sometime, my biggest worry is I know that guitar players don't typically play in the key of C, and that's the key in which I play best... I've been working on getting comfortable playing in some of the other keys though, I have my keyboard all marked up with tape and ink, I'm working on learning to play in the key of E, a key that guitar player do play in. I'm also learning the other keys, randomly.

So my friend says he likes playing in minor keys quite a bit, that is a step further (or is it farther?) than I have learned so far, I took it as a friendly challenge to learn more about minors, the musical kind, tonight I found a few websites that had all of the minor keys in graphical form, a picture of the keys with the minors marked for each key, yipee! Finally I can see what keys so I can place my fingers, I played the minor for F and it sounded really good with some of the songs I like to play. I do so much better when I can SEE the key placement rather than being told what they are, such as the reference above saying (of a chord) having a minor third between the root and the note next above it, that just makes my eyes glaze over and not in a good way, but if you SHOW me the chord, then I get it.

The thing that inspired me to expand my horizons tonight on the piano was an email I received from the company from where I ordered my gospel piano lessons, they sent me a $50 bribe to come back and order more from them, this is the second one they have sent to me, they are very generous if you have purchased from them before. This time I chose to order Christmas piano lessons, last Christmas I went through the hymnal and out of the dozen or so songs, I could only play 4 or 5 of them, the rest of them had what I referred to as weird chords, actually they were minor chords and they stumped me, I can sing it, but couldn't figure out how to play it, so now between the new lesson DVD I ordered and the pictures of minor chords on the internet, I expect that by next Christmas I'll be playing lots more Christmas songs at church and home.

I tried to video myself playing some of my new found chords, but the sky castle is very dark at night, and the computer mic wasn't doing a very good job at capturing what I was playing, so I'll have to figure someone out, I'll work on it and hopefully I'll have some video with decent audio to upload.


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Wretha,

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