Most piano students come across this seminal classical work at some point in their studies.Īs you probably know, there are eight notes in any scale if you count the octave. That meant that you could play in any key without fear of grating dissonances.īach celebrated this by composing his landmark 48 Preludes and Fugues 2 written in each major and minor key. It defined each semitone as being equidistant in frequency from its neighbour, across the octave. The ‘equal tempered’ or ‘well-tempered scale’ changed all that. There are lots of types of world music that don’t involve the diatonic scale, like Arabic music which uses non-western scales, or Indian or Thai traditional music, for example.īack in the 1600s, some keys contained horrible dissonances because the frequency relationships between the notes in each octave had not been set as identical. We’re talking exclusively about ‘western music’ here.
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In this article I propose to look at scales, keys and key signatures and how they relate to each other, and in the following two articles we’ll get on to the harmonic structure of a song.įirst, a little western music history knowledge.
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Is there also a mood consideration? Some say that major keys always sound brighter and minor keys more melancholy, but is that always the case? Can major keys sound ‘dark’ sometimes? Are certain minor keys naturally more dramatic than others?ĭid you know that ‘All You Need is Love’ was originally written in G major? Would it have been as great a hit if it had been written in Eb? Would Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata sound the same in B minor as in its actual key of C# minor?īefore we can look at whether keys can affect how bright, dramatic or melancholy your song will sound to others, we’ll need to get a few music theory basics sorted. Do you rewrite them, or move the whole piece to a higher key? More complex still, arranging your piece in certain keys might mean the piano or string inversions you’ve written sound too full, and ‘clog up’ the whole mix. On the other hand, in the key of D that low D will be out of range for your 4-string bass player, unless he decides to drop his bottom string tuning, or buy a five string! She won’t want her voice sounding too high and thin!įrom an instrumental point of view, both electric and acoustic guitars sound naturally good in keys like E, A and D because their string tunings ‘fit’ well with those keys. But your favourite female singer is likely to enjoy working in a lower key, like D-or even C if she is an alto. A male singer with a strong tenor range voice might prefer to sing in a key like G or A major, where the natural ‘tessitura’ or range of the melody might often lie above middle C.
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“Music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable” But what's the best key for your guitarist or bass player? What other considerations are there? In this tutorial we help choose the perfect key. Ever wondered what the best key for your song might be? From a practical point of view, the vocal range of your singer will obviously need bearing in mind.