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Mystery

Musical

Example

Mystery

Secret

Score

Mystery

Animated

Score

Introduction

Mystery is a mood that writers, musicians and artists struggle to create, perhaps because it is so hard to define in words. Luckily for composers, mystery is fairly easy to recreate thanks to the harmonic qualities of one special chord – the Augmented chord.

By using one Augmented chord by itself, or atop another Augmented chord, or by just using an Augmented chord with an added Major 7th, you will immediately create a mood of mystery.

USING THE AUGMENTED CHORD

In this example, we immediately commence in bar 1 with two different augmented chords, the Eb Augmented and the C Augmented:

The violins start on the Eb Augmented chord and simply move down a minor 3rd to arrive at the C Augmented chord:

In bar 2 beat 3, the violins replay the Eb Augmented chord. But this time they move up a minor 3rd to the F# Augmented chord in bar 3:

Augmented

Chord

Review