The Minor Pendulum
Two minor seventh chords, back and forth, for as long as you like. Half the notes never move, so you hear light passing over one sound rather than a chord change. That is why it can run for six minutes without anyone asking it to stop.
- 2 chords
- half the notes stay
- natural minor
same family
The progression
i7 - iv7
Why it works
In A that is Am7 and Dm7. The A and the C are in both chords, so half the sound is fixed. What moves: the E falls a whole step to D, and the G falls a whole step to F. On the way back they rise again. Nothing leaps, nothing resolves, and neither chord is more home than the other, so your ear stops waiting. Take the roots away and you are simply sliding a C major triad to an F major triad.
Hear it in context
The F is the flattened sixth degree of A, which belongs to natural minor. Its Dorian twin, the deep house vamp, has an F sharp there instead, and that is the only difference between the two. Listen to the voice that moves: here the G drops a whole step, there it drops a half step. One interval is the distance between restrained and soulful.
Make it yours
- Change the second chord, not the first
i7 to VI, to iv7, to bVII: three different songs with the same home.
- Let the filter do the arc
With the harmony standing still, the tension has to come from density, cutoff and arrangement.
- Move the stabs in time
Offbeat, then a sixteenth earlier. Same notes, different feel.
When to reach for it
When the song is carried by a voice, a groove or a sound rather than by harmony, and when a loop has to run under a vocal for four minutes.
When to leave it alone
When the song is the harmony. A ballad that tells its story through chords has nothing to say with two of them.