And not just D Minor, the saddest of all keys.
Don’t know why they are sad. But I heard that a classical radio station once told people not to play anything in a minor key during fundraising - they thought it would depress people and lead to lower donations.
WAG I think it will have something to do with the way the brain interprets sound.
As a side issue, it is known that sounds in nature tend to generate odd numbered harmonics and it is known that amplifiers using valves sound ‘warmer’ than transistors.
Valves produce some distortion but it is always in odd harmonics but transistors produce even harmonics.(IIRC odd harmonics can be combined to produce triangle waves and even harmonics combine to produce squarewaves)
In terms of measurement valve amps do not perform as well as good quality transistor amps but they sound better.
One use of distortion which demonstrates this very well is in the electric guitar.
The electric guitar when played within the limits of the electronic amplifying equipment it is a fairly insipid instrument but when you crank everything up and overdrive it all it sounds much more interesting.
Turns out that valve amp distortion sounds better to the human ear and this has been put down to it producing a more natural distortion, as in harmonics found in nature, whereas transistors sound coarser, more hard edged and colder.
This is so well recognised that you can buy yourself a guitar pre-amp that uses valves just to generate this effect.
This is off the point somewhat but it does show that there is far more to musical processing within the brain than is obvious from the spec sheets that amp manufacturers put out.
Which is a whole different Great Debate. But at the upper end, as on The Kinks’ “You Really Got Me,” high point of tube amp art in which the odd characteristics of valves cranked to eleven are used to further the artist’s creativity, when they start to ringing it’s a sound you just can’t reproduce with solid state equipment.
Am I culturally biased? Are minor keys only “sad” in some cultures, such as the West, or is it universal?
Heck, I read somewhere that certain key combinations were illegal way back when, the middle ages I suppose. Black Sabbath, of course had no qualms about playing that particular set of notes.
I think it’s off of their “paranoid” lp, right before “War Pigs”; it’s a sort of three note dirge that does sort of raise the hair on the back of your neck.
Let’s not assume that just because they sound sad to our ears, that they are sad for everyone. Have there been any studies of how people from different cultures and/or unfamiliar with western music interpret them?
IIRC, musicologist Gerard Kubik found that, in much of West Africa, the minor third interval is “female” and the major third interval is “male.” Like sex and love, the preference is to combine the two – to hit the sweet spot right between them. Thus…the blues!
This is surely an oversimplification, but I think that was the gist of it.
Do zombies feel sad when they listen to music in minor keys? 
There are actually quite a few upbeat pop/rock songs in minor keys. And some sad music in major keys.
The tritone wasn’t illegal, but in certain temperaments in sounded really disonant and disonance wasn’t really big in the Midlle Ages. The stories about excommunications are false.
I wrote a really sad flute melody once in C major. IMHO the happiness or sadness of the tune has more to do with the intervals and rhythms you use than the key. A minor key does give you more opportunities to use more dissonant intervals around the tonic, though.
You got that backward. It is the transistors that tend to produce odd harmonics, and it is the odd harmonics that sound more dissonant.
As to why minor keys sound sad, part if it may be training, as people who score movies and such tend to use them that way.
And not everyone experiences this. Me for example…could never “feel” what people were talking about with emotional reactions to different keys or intervals. Same deal with “warm” and “cool” colors: I totally don’t get it.
God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlefolk sounds sad?
Well, it does, kind of. It’s always sounded melancholy to me, despite the lyrics.
Lots of hymns are in minor keys with a major home chord on the final measure. I forget the proper term, but I always wanted to call that the resurrected cadence.
Did the theme music the series The Incredible hulk use minor keys (I know didly about music)?
Cause, man for such a short series of notes it was pretty depressing.
This paper suggests that the association is learned behavior:
Moving this zombie to Cafe Society since it’s about music.
samclem, moderator
It’s a Picardy Third.
And I hate it.
Case in point: Taps is in major key. Play it fast, and it sounds like a fanfare. Play it slowly (as it normally is), and it’s… Well, not necessarily “unhappy”, but at least somber.
There’s actually a piano piece by Mendelssohn which does the reverse: it’s in major, with a minor final chord.