46. (Natural) Minor Diatonic Chords as Four-Note Chords

How Minor Diatonic Four-Note Chords Are Formed

The procedure for building minor diatonic chords as four-note chords is the same as for major.
The most important thing, again, is that they are "the chords that can basically be used within a particular key."
In the key of A minor, that means they are made only of notes from the A minor scale.

This time too, we'll build them in the key of Am, so prepare the A minor scale.

By now you've got the hang of it.
Stack one more note than with triads, skipping one note each time.

On the first note, "A," stack three notes to the right, skipping one note each time.
In this case, they are "C," "E" and "G."
In a DAW, copying is a good idea.
This time, let's program the second octave from the start as well.

Once you've done this up to G, let's check the completed group of four-note chords.

If you can't tell the chord types right away, try making A the root of all the chords.
*Move each chord so that its lowest note is A.

The leftmost one is Am7, so the types of the other chords are now easier to see.
Put them back and look at the structure of the four-note diatonic chords.

From left to right, they follow the order

minor seventh / minor seventh flat five / major seventh / minor seventh / minor seventh / major seventh / dominant seventh

.
As with triads, this structure stays the same in other minor keys.

Example: C (natural) minor diatonic chords as four-note chords

Also, as with triads, C major and A (natural) minor are relative keys.
Therefore, the resulting diatonic chords are the same, only in a different order (no new chords appear so far).

A "Problem" with Natural Minor Diatonic Chords?

Here, let's touch again on a point unique to natural minor diatonic chords.
(From here on, we deliberately add "natural." The reason will become clear in a later lesson.)

First, let's check the scale.

If you look closely, the fifth chord has no leading tone, the note that leads to the tonic a half step above.

Let's also look at the diatonic chords.

Let's look at the four-note chords too.

With four-note chords, the fifth chord is a minor seventh, so it has neither a leading tone nor a tritone.

This seems likely to have some effect when writing songs in minor.
At this stage, a vague sense is fine: just remember that something major had is missing from the natural minor scale and diatonic chords.

Next time, let's learn how to replace natural minor diatonic chords with Roman numerals (degree names).