So I don’t know a ton about music theory, but I’m curious about how this works. Why do our brains like to hear chords that are in tune? And how do we explain why something is tuned properly?
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Chords can be dark or bright with many colours in between. A basic triad or 3 note chord consists of the I, III, and V notes of the scale with the same root as the chord. Major triads are happy, and some keys are more happy; a major C is ‘bouncy’, a major F is more ‘romantic’. Minor triads are dark or ‘sad’, it’s just a major triad with a flat III note. Among minor chords some sound more sad, such as A minor and D minor.
Adding a VII (7th note, or I-III-V-VII) adds another level of colour; a natural VII gives you a dreamy major 7th chord. A flat VII note makes you want it to resolve to the major I chord (when it’s a V7 ‘dominant’ chord). That’s the basics but there are other colours that can be added like a flat 5th or flat/sharp 9th, 11ths and 13ths as well, a suspended 4th, the 6th instead of the 5th, and so on, depending on what the melody is doing. Essentially what is happening is, tensions are created, then they are resolved, harmonically speaking.
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