Learn English – Precise word to differentiate “major” and “minor” in music

single-word-requeststerminology

In a similar manner to the way that we use "sex" to differentiate male and female, I want to find the best word to differentiate major and minor.

The Wikipedia page on the subject did not use any such word in its explanation. Nor did anything in the search engine results I looked through. That doesn't sound promising, but at the same time, I would be surprised if there was truly no word for this, as music is filled with so much terminology. It seems to have a word for every teeny tiny little nuance of the subject, if there is no word to refer to whether something is major or minor, it wouldn't seem characteristic of itself.

Here is a sentence to work with:

This composition's ______________ is minor.

Much like:

This person's sex is male.

Best Answer

It's called a tonality.

Every tonality has its own special group of notes called a scale. The scale is a specific arrangement of notes. The arrangement of these notes is how we're able to identify a scale, both aurally and visually. The two most common tonalities in Western music are the major tonality and the minor tonality. You may think that 'major' and 'minor' are just words that go at the beginning of classical music pieces, but these words can help us describe the emotions we hear within the music.

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