What represents a minor key in music?!

What represents a minor key in music?

What represents a minor key (as in the musical definition of the minor key). I need help for my homeowork in Music. There are some references I have but I want to confirm it to some users here. Thanks!

I don't really know what you mean by "represent" - do you mean what makes a key or scale minor?

In western music we have 2 sets of scales (there are more, but they're used nearly as much) major and minor. For an example let's consider A minor. Each minor is 'related' to a major scale - the one that is a third above it. This is how you find out the key signiature of the minor scale.

A minor is the relative minor of C major, because A lies three semitones below C - G minor is the relative minor of Bb major and so on. Both the major and its relative minor have the same key signiature - no sharps or flats for A minor/C major, 2 flats for G minor/Bb major.

In order to make C major into A minor, you firstly have to start the scale on A. You then play it exactly how you would play C major - except the 7th note of the scale (in A minor this is G) is sharpened.

A minor therefore looks like this

A B C D E F G# A

If you compare it to C major is looks like this

C Major C D E F G A B C D E F G A
A Minor - - - - - - - - -A B C D E F G# A

You can see that all the notes between the two, except the sharpened 7th in A minor are the same. It is the same for all relative minors. For instance here is G minor and Bb major

Bb Major Bb C D Eb F G A Bb C D Eb F G
G Minor - - - - - - - - - - - G A Bb C D Eb F# G

Now you know the scale (this is known as the HARMONIC minor - the classic minor. There are other minor scales called the MELODIC minor (which has a sharp six and seven on the way up, but not on the way down) and the NATURAL minor which is the same as the major, but starting on the note of the minor) you can work out minor chords. These are similar to major chords - but have a flat three in them in order to reflect your minor key signiature.

For instance the triad of A major is A C# E - because we have a C# in the key of A major. The triad of A minor is A C E - this is almost the same as A major, but because we don't have a C# in the key of A minor it's a C natural. The difference between the two chords is the minor has a flat 3rd compared to the major.

To summarise -
The relative minor is 3 semitones below the major
The relative minor has the same key signiature as the relative major, but a sharpened seventh note
The triad of a minor is the same as its major (i.e. A minor and A major) - but it has a flattened third.

I hope this isn't too complicated!