The Minor Third

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I've always been fascinated by the fact that one, small half strep down for the third takes the entire chord from major to minor. The interesting thing is that nothing really changes in the chord -- it's still made up of a fifth composed of a major third and a minor third. Only the arrangement of those smaller chords changes.

I'm not exactly sure what that says about music, or about life, or about attitude. It's just so interesting to me that one small little shift in the makeup of something can change its entire tone and our perception of it. It's even more fascinating to me that we understand many of the 'hows' of music, the "rules" that we've learned through thousands of years of experimentation, and yet we're not any closer to the 'whys' of music. Nobody really knows why music works the way it does. Nobody knows why it has the effect on the human brain and body that it does. And yet...it does have a profound effect on us. Music moves us in ways that nothing else can. And so much of that is the tiny little difference of a half-step in the middle of a fifth.