@ I agree. I went over that in the second part of the video Timbre and practically of the instrument you are playing make the biggest differences between keys IMO. But there’s definitely a lot of good points throughout the comments.
i heard this from someone in music production but i remember the guy saying key choice also has implications in arrangement and sound mixing because some keys will generally occupy more mid-lows than others
For example, the famous Dvorak new world 2nd movement is in the key of Db so the strings don’t resonate above the English horn. That sustained sound is way easier to do quietly as opposed to key of C or something. When it’s time to go to forte during the dance part the key “changes” to C# major.
@@50Steaks68 I'd say that the whole movement basically sounds in C#, which is reached in the opening 4 bars by a confused-looking modulation from the E minor of the first movement. The first melody is written in D flat major for ease of reading, 5 flats as opposed to 7 sharps. It then goes to the tonic minor, which is easier to read in 4 sharps. The key signature of 4 sharps is maintained for the 6 bars in C# major and the following 5 bars in A major, while the final section reprises the opening major section notated in 5 flats. Enharmonic notation like this is common in Dvorak's music, and has nothing to do with timbre.
@@fonsie19 Db is easier to read for the winds which are the focus for the first half of the movement. Not 100% sure why he switches to C# major for the oboe solo though, that feels like an odd choice. My main point in my first reply was that he chose C#/Db instead of C or D for orchestration purposes.
I have "poor man's perfect pitch", where I can frequently tell if a song is playing in the key i usually hear it in. That wrong-key classical piece at the beginning and end was really unnerving.
Must say, I clicked on this expecting it to be, at worst, some subjective nonsense, at best, well-meaning but incomplete, but I think you absolutely nailed it. really thorough and clear. the only thing I could think to add is that, particularly for bass heavy music like dub or many types of electronic club music, transposition can make an enormous difference to perception because some keys' fundamentals land in a sweet spot that really correlates to rib-cage shaking, whereas others inherently leave you with a choice of too high (only hear it, don't feel it) or too low (vice versa, or often vanish altogether on anything but the most purpose built sound systems).
Re: keys based on the instrument: there are also diatonic instruments that take it a step farther because it's not just a matter of certain keys being more difficult but rather certain keys being genuinely impossible because the instrument just doesn't play those notes. The Highland pipes are limited to pretty much A and D (although they transpose so the music sounds in Bb or Eb) and other major keys are typically not possible. Diatonic harmonicas are limited to one key but can work in a couple of other keys (harmonica players are familiar with harmonica positions) but they have a different vibe in other keys. Diatonic accordions are basically the same as harmonicas but may have one to four rows that generally allow them to play in one to four keys but with some having an extra row to give accidents or some having two rows tuned in semitones (most commonly C/B or D/C#) but the left hand is still usually limited to only a few chords. Even smaller piano accordions may lack left hand buttons for all bass notes and chords so while any key is possible on the treble side, it isn't on the bass. Also similarly to how the voice selects keys based on its range, some instruments choose keys based on their range. For example, with a tin whistle or Irish flute in D you may play a tune in D when the third or root is the lowest note but you might play the tune in G if the fifth is the lowest note because the root note of the whistle of flute's key or sometimes one semitone lower is the lowest note you can play. So a tune that starts on the fifth might not fit comfortably in D whereas G allows the tune to play with the lowest note of the instrument being the lowest note of the tune. Hence you'll notice that while most Irish tunes are in D, some tunes like the Kesh Jig are pretty much always in G.
That's why so much Scottish bagpipe music is written in A mixolydian (sounding Bb). Soundtrack composers took note of this connection, to the point that mixolydian melodies have become strongly associated with Highland-like aesthetics and scenery.
@InventorZahran in fact, many tunes played in D (sounding in Eb) are quite odd because they can't include the b7. For example, Flower of Scotland is played in D because it doesn't fit the range of the pipes in A since the melody goes one octave with the fifth as the highest and lowest note and so E-E on the jey of A doesn't fit but A-A does and so it's played in D. But then playing it in D, there's no C note and so you lose the very Scottish sounding b7 in the last measure of the melody. Although one of my favorite Scottish tunes is Am pìobaire air mhisg (The Drunken Piper) is intersection because in order to fit in the range of the pipes, it has to be played in Am. The lowest note is G and the highest is A so it fits perfectly into the b7-root 9th range of the pipes... but the issue is that then the tune requires a C to suggest Am while the pipes have a C#. So what is the solution? Play a B instead of a C. The 2nd doesn't lean towards minor or major and so the harmony stats to that Am-G harmony that minor key Celtic music is know for while being able to get around the lack of the "correct" minor key note. This is a clever tune.
Synesthesia is also interesting. Scriabin famously corresponded notes and harmonies to colors. I think of this as another expression of what Schubert tried to describe in words. Also, it’s interesting how many people find B minor to be so harrowing: “solitary and melancholic” per Charpentier. And Horowitz said it was the saddest of keys.
There's also an intertextual component to key choice. The moods associated with certain keys from the pre-equal temperament era survive and persist with us through the legacy of the repertoire. Successive generations of composers have continued to absorb and inherit the patterns of key choice from their predecessors even once equal-temperament was normalised, which has maintained associations between keys and characteristics within the mass consciousness. To put it simply, there's a certain set of well-known masterpieces written in the key of G minor, for instance, and the sound of that key is associated with the overall mood and character of that set of pieces. So a composer who wants to write a piece reminiscent of that mood might choose that key to compose in.
Just on the opening statement of "unless you have perfect pitch you cant tell anyway". That's a topic I talk about a lot especially with my jazz musician friends. I disagree with the entire notion of there only being relative and perfect pitch, because its more of a scale and not black and white. I'm someone that doesn't have true perfect pitch but my "trained pitch" as I call it is good enough to where I can pick out most keys, chords, or bass notes very quickly to the point of people misunderstanding me as having perfect pitch very often. Some of it is just pure memory of the sound of a pitch, other times its memorizing the feeling of vocalizing the note in my throat, and if I can't pick it I just default to sounding a concert C in my head and using relative pitch to figure it out from there. Also specifically with jazz chords I can remember the sound of certain voicings. If someone plays Eb, A, D, G, B on the piano I immediately know thats a rootless F7#11 or Cmin/maj7. A common one is being able to pick our specific notes of someone else playing your main instrument, because you become so attuned to the pitch + finger position relation to where you can instinctively tell the note.
> I immediately know thats a rootless F7#11 or Cmin/maj7 I'd actually say that's the easiest of all to hear (vs the key and literal pitch of notes). The notion that you can willy nilly transpose random notes up or down octaves, or even omit certain notes, is crazy to me. Doesn't sound the same at all.
This matters for electronic music as well. You want the lowest melodic bass note to be low, but not out of our hearing range. Keys can also be used to make melodic and percussive sounds sit in different frequency ranges.
This discussion is very obvious if you sing. Every pitch and vowel combination is one that a singer has to master. The way your voice lays out, maybe a high G can ring out in a very particular way. As a songwriter, desciding whether you want that high G to be the tonic, the 2, the 3, the 5, etc. has an impact. I started singing much later than other instruments, and since diving in I found keys to contain much more character than they used to. Wherever Do, Re Me, and Sol land in your range has a large impact on the material you might write or the way you might develop melodies.
throwing my 2 cents in about instrument practicality between keys, after playing bass for a while i came to notice a lot of rock & metal music is often in E, A, or D major/minor because the first 3 open strings of the guitar & bass are tuned this way, so it’s really easy to write to fit that
In additional to all that, if you play a song on a piano one octave lower and one octave higher, it's the same key but the difference is obvious, even to people without perfect pitch. Playing in different keys is the same, just more subtle.
Yes it does, and it’s a fantastic idea to do away with equal temperaments in order to have some key color, which is a beautiful thing. Also, speakers react differently to different keys based on the resonance of the bass notes
You explained it perfectly. Since the entire piece becomes higher or lower in pitch when you transpose, maybe sometimes you would choose to transpose a piece because you want it to sound higher or lower in pitch than it does in its current key, but shifting everything by an octave would be too much. I have no clue if people actually do this by the way. It's just something I thought about.
Back when music is still being developed, key signatures are invented so that they don't have to write sharps and flats again and again throughout the whole piece....
Definitely agree about the weirdness of using pre-equal temperament advice for equal temperament music. People share this "feeling of scales" so often with such confidence, that it makes me really doubt everything I see on social media. It's so obviously wrong. In electronic music, the frequency of the bass is quite important for several reasons, first of all, some frequencies are low enough to produce a very pleasant feeling of bass in the body from powerful systems - if it's too low, the bass becomes too wobbly and doesn't hit. too high, and the body feeling is diminished. Second, in faster genres, the amount of oscillations the bass wave can complete between bass notes (typically, quarter notes), makes a difference for how pronounced and tonal the bass sounds. And this is secondary but still a consideration, you might care about the scale if you are trying to produce music that fits in a set with other music - either your own or of others', as typically in a set songs blend in and out of each other. If you produce your music in non-matching keys, your set is going to be very difficult to connect. As someone who noodles on the piano, there are some keys that are easier to play than others - I personally like A, D and E, they have a nice combination of blacks and whites that feel very smooth. Too few blacks and too many blacks don't really flow.
Worth mentioning that jazz musicians by-and-far do not even bother categorizing their songs into keys, given that they rarely stay in one key for more than a few measures. Chord symbols reign supreme, and sharps and flats are written as they occur because we're no longer restricted by conventions of printing presses.
Some low frequencies are not audible/suitable for speakers and humans perception. For this reason some keys works better, if you care about really low bass in a specific frequency range
Oooh, I really like the historical context of this. People treating a bunch of major/minor keys as if they're uniquely sounding things has always bugged me, since they're the exact same ratios just moved up or down in pitch, so it's interesting to learn that that misunderstanding has a historical basis in different tuning methods.
@davidjohnson1654 On equal temperament and assuming no overtone shenanigans with the instrument or playback device? No. A power chord is a 3:2 ratio. What is the difference between one played at 300:200 Hz and one played at 150:100 Hz, other than a difference of pitch? They sound different because the pitch is different. That is all. We hear more than that because of the physical nature of the instrument, playback device, tuning, etc. A 3:2 ratio does not suddenly develop a unique flavor as you change the root frequency.
Really great video dude. This topic isn't discussed enough and it's great you explained why keys are still relevant in such a concise and understandable way.
This is a good short video about the notion of modern keys. I was tempted to scream, "no, no, it's..." until then you bring up that point two seconds later. One good example of keys and "instruments:" The Barbershop Harmony Society has a bimonthly publication that includes a snippet of the end of a song (we call them "tags") written for all female, all male, and mixed voices. The difference? It is only the key it is written in. Instrument ranges (even the human voice) is the biggest element in the proper key and there are many reasons why you might want to play or sing a piece of music in a different key.
In renaissance choral music we just transpose the music so it is not too high for the tenors or too low for the altos. A flat major is my favourite choral key because high A flat is not too high for the sopranos, and basses can sing low F comfortably.
also it's worth adding that the mood and character and context of notable works in a given key affects listener's perception of the key. Mozart's Requiem or Beethoven's 9th or AoF are most likely responsible for what we, general listeners, think of D minor.
A tuning standard verses Tonic tuning standard also factors into this-- imposing a kind of collective asysmetrical tuning on the orchestra. The open strings of the violin are pretty close in D-- but obstensibly out in Eb: Or would be if Orchestras played in anything like 12TET-- which they don't. But if an piano and violin played together in Eb the violin would have to avoid open strings-- or tune to the piano in a way that's more optimized for Eb than tuning A to A. To my ears a lot of wind instruments are tuned asysmetricaly-- especially saxaphones-- and the idea of asysmetrical tuning and keys being actually different is largely true of modern acoustic instruments in their finished twentieth century states-- with even guitars on older recordings being tuned to favor certain chords.
Exactly. As a trombone player, I need to listen and adjust to works being played in various keys. This is why in a big orchestral endings, the TROMBONE is almost invariably given the 3rd of the chord - the note that establishes the final tonality.
I'm not that musically educated but the "little bit of knowledge" - over and above the majority of my friends - that I can demonstrate to them is to play the Overture to Coriolan by Beethoven and point out the radical shift in mood he effects by modulating from C minor to E flat major at various points - ask me to do an aural "disquisition" on Bach's Well Tempered Clavier (either book) however and I'd probably be shown up fairly quickly !
I mean, you don't have to have perfect pitch to 'feel' the key of a song. There was a study where people were played two versions of theme songs of popular tv shows. One version was pitched up or down by a semitone or whole tone, and the other was unaltered. IIRC people guessed right about 75% of the time if the theme song was altered by a whole step. That seems to indicate that more people have the ability to recognize pitch without context than just the people with perfect pitch. The only difference is that people with perfect pitch are able to then put a name to a key or note, not just know if it's right or not. But think about how many singers are able to start a song acapella, and be in the right key when the band joins in. I think most people have some form of pitch memory, and that extends to keys as well. This, of course, only matters with familiar songs being played in different keys, not when writing songs. In that case, the audience has no memory of the song yet. So from that perspective, your analysis is correct. Just wanted to add that people are able to recognize keys to a certain extent, and that therefore the key a song was originally performed in can matter.
There is definitely also the readability aspect. After leaving just intonation behind, I think the general inclination quickly became that pieces with more flats or sharps seemed more "serious" simply by virtue of being less accessible to inexperienced players. Especially french post-romantics/mysticists like Ravel, Scriabin and Messiaen I associate very strongly with sharp keys, and while it's definitely also to do with the black keys on the piano, they still heavily prefer sharp keys to flat keys, when in theory they should otherwise be equally viable. I think Gaspard de la Nuit is a great example of this. Ondine is written in C# major, which is both 2 more accidentals than Db major plus the key leads to a heinous amount of double sharps. Then he does Scarbo in G# minor, but for the slower and darker middle movement he opts for Eb minor; for somewhat "bright" pieces they use sharps, for "dark" pieces they use flats
for an analogy, consider cooking. It wouldn't technically matter if you you make a cake using a cup of every ingredient, or 1.1 cups of every ingredient. The ratios would still be the same and the cake should theoretically taste the same and just be 10% bigger. The extra .1 cup of each ingredient would be a pain to measure out and could result in inconsistency.
You're confusing Temperment with tuning standard. With asysmetrical temperments the ratios of the intervals are different. A-440 verses 442 mostly doesn't matter. Perfect 12TET verses streched 12TET verses Well Temperment verses Mean Tone absolutely does matter-- and is directly analogous to different ratios of ingrediants in baking.
c# major's my favoritest key atm. i like how it makes me feel ever-so-slightily throwey-uppy inside, but like, the awesome version, of that feeling, i think__
I will stand by this. The keys of d minor, c# minor, d flat major, b flat minor, a flat minor, and g flat/f sharp major are the best. The high flat/sharp count keys due to ease of playing and improvising at the keyboard, and d minor as A, the dominant of d, is the lowest key on the piano. It is obscure, but allows for a really dark and broody sort of bass sound impossible with other keys.
@@polygondeath2361open strings on the guitar are an affordance that tends to favor C and the next few keys around the circle of fifths (G, D, A). Go ahead and throw in E because of two E strings (particularly the low one, for emphasizing big hits) and the fact that the 20th century repertoire on the instrument favors a blue third in that key, and you’re basically in G/Em anyways. For the rest you have to do barre chords more often than not, and think about more accidentals in chord names, and so lots of vernacular style players avoid those keys.
what about the relation between keys? i thought the video would say something about it, like, it's easier to modulate from C major to G major rather than from C major to F# major for example; or for burrowing chords from one key to another, some will sound more consonant than others. Of course it's all context based
I would partly disagree on why key matters. When you transpose a melody on a piano by 1,2 or 3 octaves does it sound different or the same? The ratios are all the same, but does that mean that you hear the same thing?
Sometimes a key can be transposed and I hear no difference. Other times if it's transposed even a half step, and without any reference, I can identify that immediately and it just sounds odd. i definitely do NOT have perfect pitch, but I have been playing for a very long time, and for me sometimes key really makes a difference.
Another note about keyboards and black keys is that the black keys give a key signature its texture and shape. So if you're ever wondering why Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles stick to black keys, now you know why.
There is a simpler explanation: they're both blind. I am not blind, but I can easily play Stevie's clavinet backing to "Superstition" with a teatowel hiding the keys, because the differently sized "islands" of black keys, and even more importantly, the physical gaps between adjacent black notes, provide an instant tactile feedback closed loop for establishing which black key is which. They can/could play perfectly well in any key, but it's much more relaxing and easier to groove, particularly to a pentatonic motif like the Superstition riff, with a key like Eb minor (whether sighted or not) because it virtually plays itself.
@ I see. You were talking about something along the lines of "tactile texture" (rather than "sonic texture" which was what I thought you meant). Got it! And thanks for being so unYouTubishly gracious!
I'm a multi instrumentist hut even with that when I compose stuff I end up changing the keys when I rehearse with the musicians to better fit the registers
The way I see "Music theory" is that it's primarily about communication, and patterns. It's a way to explain the development of ideas. Some things are more practical than others. And I think one of the downfall of theory, at least in how it's taught is that it has this idea of "Well this is how things must be because the theory says so". If anyone believes that then I think "theory" has been used in a way that isn't beneficial. To me the most beneficial thing would probably be hearing intervals, or hearing chords. Being able to recognise those sounds, so that if you hear music you can play it without referring to sheet music/tab etc. Things like major scales, minor scales are also very useful, but there is a lot of stuff about them that is arbitrary. Really the most important thing is just the idea of a fixed pattern of selecting notes
Good vid. I've always wanted to play with the old tuning systems (I play the piano). Do you happen to know a way to get, let's say, 1/3 comma system on a Roland synthesizer?
@@jakethurston-doublebass Ok thanks. I have an option called "user scale" which allows me to tune the specific keys from "-64" to "+63". I've got to learn how to create the old temperament's with this.
It does matter. But really much not anymore due to equal temperament. Composers before equal temperament used to abuse the unequally tempered scales for their “key colouration”. You’ll hear it. Flat keys sound flat. Sharp keys sound sharp. Natural keys, well, they sound natural. They understand the more accidentals you add, the more dissonance that is created, hence more “colouration” of the sound… so yes, they DO matter, but in an equally tempered scale? No
Thanks for the comment. My argument was they do still matter but now it has more to do with the timbre and practicality of the instrument playing in certain keys rather than the keys themselves having different tunings of intervals such as in meantome temperament.
Keys do matter but not only cuz of the things exposed. They still have a personality and mood, each one of them. One must be either an amateur, not instrumentist or ear blind not to see it
Can't say I agree that there is no difference in key when using equal temperament. Transposing songs can make a huge difference in feel and tonality regardless of instrumentation. A simple switch up from C to C# major feels as big as it ever has, producing songs that are distinct and memorable, and which instantly become blander when moved back down to C.
@@gregoryfenn1462I don't have perfect pitch, but for me a given song feels different in different keys. Sometimes better, sometimes worse. And for singing, a song in different keys can feel drastically different for how I feel my voice. The reason is simple. When you transpose a piece by an octave, it sounds different because the absolute pitch of notes matters a lot. Also, absolute differences for note intervals change as well(even though the ratio stays the same). The same logic applies to transposing within an octave.
@@gregoryfenn1462 That's true, and that's why we have to be cagey about applying the same descriptions as centuries ago, before A=440 was a thing. We know from tuning forks, tuned metal percussion instruments, and pipe organs of early Baroque that A varied from A=465, about a semitone sharp compared to today (eg for some of the Leipzig organs Bach used) down to A=415 in many places, ~ a semitone flat (or even down to 392 - roughly a whole tone flat in a few locations)
"A simple switch up from C to C# major feels as big as it ever has, producing songs that are distinct and memorable, and which instantly become blander when moved back down to C" that's more about having been used to a C being very common, than something inherent in C# or the jump of just a semitone
Respectfully, I disagree that the only difference between Keys is caused by the instrument playing them. In my view, there is a deep and fundamental difference in the Keys. Whenever a song is transposed to a different Key, it changes the energy of the song. No Keys are inherently superior or inferior to any other; but for a variety of reasons - some I feel deep-down but it's hard to put it all in words - some songs and music pieces are much better suited to different Keys. We can talk about the theoretical reasons why it doesn't make a difference, relatively speaking, but one knows in real experience that it makes a difference. Just like in speaking. I mean, if someone with a very high voice narrated "Shawshank Redemption" instead of Morgan Freeman's baritone, would it "hit" your soul the same, even if their pitch intervals were all relatively equivalent to his, just transposed way up? On the other hand, if Dorothy sang "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" in The Wizard of Oz in a bass register (if she could), would that, in that scene, have hit you the same?
I disagree. The key of music does matter and this is why even people without perfect pitch (as seen in your comments) can often tell if something isn't in its original key via the Levitin effect. This is because different keys are indeed different keys as they are different pitches. Just as red is not the same color as blue, A is not the same note as C. The fact that music sounds "very similar" even after transposed can be likened to the fact that I can adjust the color settings on an image so Mario no longer has a red hat and blue overalls and he'll still look very similar to Mario. Mario in a different color pallet. It doesn't show that choice of colors to use in art is "meaningless" or "doesn't matter". Maybe the color red doesn't have some grand objective meaning, but it is objectively a different wavelength than other colors.
never thought that it could be so related to the actual instrument that's playing the piece. We're so used to VST's that it just becomes an afterthought. Very cool video!
Very true. I once did a song with a small brass section, all with VSTs, and one person upon hearing it told me, yeah, great song, but trumpets would never play in that key. I picked the key for my voice, sorry virtual trumpet players.
To me the key of the song does matter, I have chromesthesia, I associate different keys with different colors. So to me the key does make a pretty big difference, actually.😁
Honestly - don't get it. You said "key don't matter if we going to play on a digital instrument" but they clearly does matter when i use my synthesizer in DAW despite perfect tuning i can get. And i clearly can hear different characteristics if i use my sampled or physical-modeling piano. Clearly i cat get those more innocent and childish\sad with hint of hope sounds from Cmaj and depressing\angry resolve from Dmin with standart tuning.And this characteristics dosen't go anywhere even if i start to pitchbent (in reasonable range) instrument btw.
Wonderful content Jake, but delivered at breakneck speed. Kindly slow down! Your material will be more assimilable if you do. On another tack, if composing in equal temperament for the piano, say, then the quality of the sound in different keys will map largely onto a pitch range. But not only that; different pitch ranges engage a different proportion of each of the different registers of the piano (regions where there is one, two and three strings per key), so the sound will be qualitatively different.
key doesn't matter. no one can tell, no one cares. it only matter to singers for comfort, and to jazz musicians who, to be honest, don't know what they're doing anyway, and play anything they want and pretend it sounds good. most of the time it sounds shit.
Video Chapters in Description. Thanks for Watching!
as a keyboardist, yes the key of music matters. and it's not for sound, it's for my hands. LMAO.
@ I agree. I went over that in the second part of the video Timbre and practically of the instrument you are playing make the biggest differences between keys IMO. But there’s definitely a lot of good points throughout the comments.
@@jakethurston-doublebass i see. got it!
i heard this from someone in music production but i remember the guy saying key choice also has implications in arrangement and sound mixing because some keys will generally occupy more mid-lows than others
Probably has to do with the lowest frequency of the key they are using @xura7CB made a good point similar to this.
For example, the famous Dvorak new world 2nd movement is in the key of Db so the strings don’t resonate above the English horn. That sustained sound is way easier to do quietly as opposed to key of C or something. When it’s time to go to forte during the dance part the key “changes” to C# major.
@@50Steaks68 what is the difference between Db and C# in this case?
@@50Steaks68 I'd say that the whole movement basically sounds in C#, which is reached in the opening 4 bars by a confused-looking modulation from the E minor of the first movement. The first melody is written in D flat major for ease of reading, 5 flats as opposed to 7 sharps. It then goes to the tonic minor, which is easier to read in 4 sharps. The key signature of 4 sharps is maintained for the 6 bars in C# major and the following 5 bars in A major, while the final section reprises the opening major section notated in 5 flats. Enharmonic notation like this is common in Dvorak's music, and has nothing to do with timbre.
@@fonsie19 Db is easier to read for the winds which are the focus for the first half of the movement. Not 100% sure why he switches to C# major for the oboe solo though, that feels like an odd choice. My main point in my first reply was that he chose C#/Db instead of C or D for orchestration purposes.
Rock in E: Yup, this is rock
Rock in Eb: YOoooo I'm fuckin tripping out
But what is Rock w/o a guitar? And the guitar has nice open strings to compliment that E.
@@ronj9448 then tune it down half a step
@@Nitsu_ Lol exactly, just tune all the strings
Key may not be that significant but register definitely makes a difference to “mood” of a song. Great video!
I have "poor man's perfect pitch", where I can frequently tell if a song is playing in the key i usually hear it in. That wrong-key classical piece at the beginning and end was really unnerving.
5:07. D minor being the saddest of all keys was the first thing I thought of when I saw the title of this video.
E minor fits better for his concerto
Does the key of the music even ma-?
Every person with perfect pitch: YES, IT DOES! THANK YOU!
Must say, I clicked on this expecting it to be, at worst, some subjective nonsense, at best, well-meaning but incomplete, but I think you absolutely nailed it. really thorough and clear. the only thing I could think to add is that, particularly for bass heavy music like dub or many types of electronic club music, transposition can make an enormous difference to perception because some keys' fundamentals land in a sweet spot that really correlates to rib-cage shaking, whereas others inherently leave you with a choice of too high (only hear it, don't feel it) or too low (vice versa, or often vanish altogether on anything but the most purpose built sound systems).
Re: keys based on the instrument: there are also diatonic instruments that take it a step farther because it's not just a matter of certain keys being more difficult but rather certain keys being genuinely impossible because the instrument just doesn't play those notes. The Highland pipes are limited to pretty much A and D (although they transpose so the music sounds in Bb or Eb) and other major keys are typically not possible.
Diatonic harmonicas are limited to one key but can work in a couple of other keys (harmonica players are familiar with harmonica positions) but they have a different vibe in other keys.
Diatonic accordions are basically the same as harmonicas but may have one to four rows that generally allow them to play in one to four keys but with some having an extra row to give accidents or some having two rows tuned in semitones (most commonly C/B or D/C#) but the left hand is still usually limited to only a few chords. Even smaller piano accordions may lack left hand buttons for all bass notes and chords so while any key is possible on the treble side, it isn't on the bass.
Also similarly to how the voice selects keys based on its range, some instruments choose keys based on their range. For example, with a tin whistle or Irish flute in D you may play a tune in D when the third or root is the lowest note but you might play the tune in G if the fifth is the lowest note because the root note of the whistle of flute's key or sometimes one semitone lower is the lowest note you can play. So a tune that starts on the fifth might not fit comfortably in D whereas G allows the tune to play with the lowest note of the instrument being the lowest note of the tune. Hence you'll notice that while most Irish tunes are in D, some tunes like the Kesh Jig are pretty much always in G.
That's why so much Scottish bagpipe music is written in A mixolydian (sounding Bb). Soundtrack composers took note of this connection, to the point that mixolydian melodies have become strongly associated with Highland-like aesthetics and scenery.
@InventorZahran in fact, many tunes played in D (sounding in Eb) are quite odd because they can't include the b7. For example, Flower of Scotland is played in D because it doesn't fit the range of the pipes in A since the melody goes one octave with the fifth as the highest and lowest note and so E-E on the jey of A doesn't fit but A-A does and so it's played in D. But then playing it in D, there's no C note and so you lose the very Scottish sounding b7 in the last measure of the melody.
Although one of my favorite Scottish tunes is Am pìobaire air mhisg (The Drunken Piper) is intersection because in order to fit in the range of the pipes, it has to be played in Am. The lowest note is G and the highest is A so it fits perfectly into the b7-root 9th range of the pipes... but the issue is that then the tune requires a C to suggest Am while the pipes have a C#. So what is the solution? Play a B instead of a C. The 2nd doesn't lean towards minor or major and so the harmony stats to that Am-G harmony that minor key Celtic music is know for while being able to get around the lack of the "correct" minor key note. This is a clever tune.
Synesthesia is also interesting. Scriabin famously corresponded notes and harmonies to colors. I think of this as another expression of what Schubert tried to describe in words. Also, it’s interesting how many people find B minor to be so harrowing: “solitary and melancholic” per Charpentier. And Horowitz said it was the saddest of keys.
There's also an intertextual component to key choice. The moods associated with certain keys from the pre-equal temperament era survive and persist with us through the legacy of the repertoire. Successive generations of composers have continued to absorb and inherit the patterns of key choice from their predecessors even once equal-temperament was normalised, which has maintained associations between keys and characteristics within the mass consciousness. To put it simply, there's a certain set of well-known masterpieces written in the key of G minor, for instance, and the sound of that key is associated with the overall mood and character of that set of pieces. So a composer who wants to write a piece reminiscent of that mood might choose that key to compose in.
Well said!
Just on the opening statement of "unless you have perfect pitch you cant tell anyway". That's a topic I talk about a lot especially with my jazz musician friends. I disagree with the entire notion of there only being relative and perfect pitch, because its more of a scale and not black and white. I'm someone that doesn't have true perfect pitch but my "trained pitch" as I call it is good enough to where I can pick out most keys, chords, or bass notes very quickly to the point of people misunderstanding me as having perfect pitch very often. Some of it is just pure memory of the sound of a pitch, other times its memorizing the feeling of vocalizing the note in my throat, and if I can't pick it I just default to sounding a concert C in my head and using relative pitch to figure it out from there. Also specifically with jazz chords I can remember the sound of certain voicings. If someone plays Eb, A, D, G, B on the piano I immediately know thats a rootless F7#11 or Cmin/maj7. A common one is being able to pick our specific notes of someone else playing your main instrument, because you become so attuned to the pitch + finger position relation to where you can instinctively tell the note.
> I immediately know thats a rootless F7#11 or Cmin/maj7
I'd actually say that's the easiest of all to hear (vs the key and literal pitch of notes). The notion that you can willy nilly transpose random notes up or down octaves, or even omit certain notes, is crazy to me. Doesn't sound the same at all.
This matters for electronic music as well. You want the lowest melodic bass note to be low, but not out of our hearing range. Keys can also be used to make melodic and percussive sounds sit in different frequency ranges.
This discussion is very obvious if you sing. Every pitch and vowel combination is one that a singer has to master. The way your voice lays out, maybe a high G can ring out in a very particular way. As a songwriter, desciding whether you want that high G to be the tonic, the 2, the 3, the 5, etc. has an impact. I started singing much later than other instruments, and since diving in I found keys to contain much more character than they used to. Wherever Do, Re Me, and Sol land in your range has a large impact on the material you might write or the way you might develop melodies.
throwing my 2 cents in about instrument practicality between keys, after playing bass for a while i came to notice a lot of rock & metal music is often in E, A, or D major/minor because the first 3 open strings of the guitar & bass are tuned this way, so it’s really easy to write to fit that
Yup but if you were playing electric bass the A and D are also at the 5th fret which is nice and easy for us lazy folks. Win Win.
In additional to all that, if you play a song on a piano one octave lower and one octave higher, it's the same key but the difference is obvious, even to people without perfect pitch. Playing in different keys is the same, just more subtle.
Yes it does, and it’s a fantastic idea to do away with equal temperaments in order to have some key color, which is a beautiful thing.
Also, speakers react differently to different keys based on the resonance of the bass notes
Even changing tuning by a quarter of a second is matter
C major: home sweet home
C major + 1/4 tone: RETRO VIBEEEEES
You explained it perfectly. Since the entire piece becomes higher or lower in pitch when you transpose, maybe sometimes you would choose to transpose a piece because you want it to sound higher or lower in pitch than it does in its current key, but shifting everything by an octave would be too much. I have no clue if people actually do this by the way. It's just something I thought about.
Unrelated but in some cases keys are used as metaphors when changing keys ruclips.net/video/qUzOuiLto6M/видео.htmlsi=Fk8N6LasG4GildiS
Back when music is still being developed, key signatures are invented so that they don't have to write sharps and flats again and again throughout the whole piece....
Definitely agree about the weirdness of using pre-equal temperament advice for equal temperament music. People share this "feeling of scales" so often with such confidence, that it makes me really doubt everything I see on social media. It's so obviously wrong.
In electronic music, the frequency of the bass is quite important for several reasons, first of all, some frequencies are low enough to produce a very pleasant feeling of bass in the body from powerful systems - if it's too low, the bass becomes too wobbly and doesn't hit. too high, and the body feeling is diminished. Second, in faster genres, the amount of oscillations the bass wave can complete between bass notes (typically, quarter notes), makes a difference for how pronounced and tonal the bass sounds.
And this is secondary but still a consideration, you might care about the scale if you are trying to produce music that fits in a set with other music - either your own or of others', as typically in a set songs blend in and out of each other. If you produce your music in non-matching keys, your set is going to be very difficult to connect.
As someone who noodles on the piano, there are some keys that are easier to play than others - I personally like A, D and E, they have a nice combination of blacks and whites that feel very smooth. Too few blacks and too many blacks don't really flow.
This is amazing for only 1.7k subscribers! Keep up the good work!
@@sanciston thanks! That means a lot!
Worth mentioning that jazz musicians by-and-far do not even bother categorizing their songs into keys, given that they rarely stay in one key for more than a few measures.
Chord symbols reign supreme, and sharps and flats are written as they occur because we're no longer restricted by conventions of printing presses.
Some low frequencies are not audible/suitable for speakers and humans perception. For this reason some keys works better, if you care about really low bass in a specific frequency range
That’s a good point. I’ve heard of sound systems that a a massage low G so they favor that key.
that totally depends on your arrangement and register though...
This video was quick and concise, nice work.
Oooh, I really like the historical context of this. People treating a bunch of major/minor keys as if they're uniquely sounding things has always bugged me, since they're the exact same ratios just moved up or down in pitch, so it's interesting to learn that that misunderstanding has a historical basis in different tuning methods.
I disagree: The difference is fundamental, and goes way beyond instruments and tuning systems.
@davidjohnson1654 On equal temperament and assuming no overtone shenanigans with the instrument or playback device? No.
A power chord is a 3:2 ratio. What is the difference between one played at 300:200 Hz and one played at 150:100 Hz, other than a difference of pitch? They sound different because the pitch is different. That is all.
We hear more than that because of the physical nature of the instrument, playback device, tuning, etc.
A 3:2 ratio does not suddenly develop a unique flavor as you change the root frequency.
Really great video dude. This topic isn't discussed enough and it's great you explained why keys are still relevant in such a concise and understandable way.
Playing a song in E major…
… on the guitar: 😏
… on the piano: 😳
Playing a song in F major…
…on the guitar: 😳
…on the piano: 😏
This is a good short video about the notion of modern keys. I was tempted to scream, "no, no, it's..." until then you bring up that point two seconds later. One good example of keys and "instruments:" The Barbershop Harmony Society has a bimonthly publication that includes a snippet of the end of a song (we call them "tags") written for all female, all male, and mixed voices. The difference? It is only the key it is written in. Instrument ranges (even the human voice) is the biggest element in the proper key and there are many reasons why you might want to play or sing a piece of music in a different key.
I have unbridled lust for this channel
In renaissance choral music we just transpose the music so it is not too high for the tenors or too low for the altos. A flat major is my favourite choral key because high A flat is not too high for the sopranos, and basses can sing low F comfortably.
also it's worth adding that the mood and character and context of notable works in a given key affects listener's perception of the key. Mozart's Requiem or Beethoven's 9th or AoF are most likely responsible for what we, general listeners, think of D minor.
A tuning standard verses Tonic tuning standard also factors into this-- imposing a kind of collective asysmetrical tuning on the orchestra. The open strings of the violin are pretty close in D-- but obstensibly out in Eb: Or would be if Orchestras played in anything like 12TET-- which they don't.
But if an piano and violin played together in Eb the violin would have to avoid open strings-- or tune to the piano in a way that's more optimized for Eb than tuning A to A.
To my ears a lot of wind instruments are tuned asysmetricaly-- especially saxaphones-- and the idea of asysmetrical tuning and keys being actually different is largely true of modern acoustic instruments in their finished twentieth century states-- with even guitars on older recordings being tuned to favor certain chords.
Exactly. As a trombone player, I need to listen and adjust to works being played in various keys. This is why in a big orchestral endings, the TROMBONE is almost invariably given the 3rd of the chord - the note that establishes the final tonality.
I'm not that musically educated but the "little bit of knowledge" - over and above the majority of my friends - that I can demonstrate to them is to play the Overture to Coriolan by Beethoven and point out the radical shift in mood he effects by modulating from C minor to E flat major at various points - ask me to do an aural "disquisition" on Bach's Well Tempered Clavier (either book) however and I'd probably be shown up fairly quickly !
I mean, you don't have to have perfect pitch to 'feel' the key of a song. There was a study where people were played two versions of theme songs of popular tv shows. One version was pitched up or down by a semitone or whole tone, and the other was unaltered. IIRC people guessed right about 75% of the time if the theme song was altered by a whole step.
That seems to indicate that more people have the ability to recognize pitch without context than just the people with perfect pitch. The only difference is that people with perfect pitch are able to then put a name to a key or note, not just know if it's right or not.
But think about how many singers are able to start a song acapella, and be in the right key when the band joins in. I think most people have some form of pitch memory, and that extends to keys as well.
This, of course, only matters with familiar songs being played in different keys, not when writing songs. In that case, the audience has no memory of the song yet. So from that perspective, your analysis is correct. Just wanted to add that people are able to recognize keys to a certain extent, and that therefore the key a song was originally performed in can matter.
Bro roasted us in the first 10 Seconds
Excellent! Subscribed.
There is definitely also the readability aspect. After leaving just intonation behind, I think the general inclination quickly became that pieces with more flats or sharps seemed more "serious" simply by virtue of being less accessible to inexperienced players. Especially french post-romantics/mysticists like Ravel, Scriabin and Messiaen I associate very strongly with sharp keys, and while it's definitely also to do with the black keys on the piano, they still heavily prefer sharp keys to flat keys, when in theory they should otherwise be equally viable.
I think Gaspard de la Nuit is a great example of this. Ondine is written in C# major, which is both 2 more accidentals than Db major plus the key leads to a heinous amount of double sharps. Then he does Scarbo in G# minor, but for the slower and darker middle movement he opts for Eb minor; for somewhat "bright" pieces they use sharps, for "dark" pieces they use flats
for an analogy, consider cooking.
It wouldn't technically matter if you you make a cake using a cup of every ingredient, or 1.1 cups of every ingredient. The ratios would still be the same and the cake should theoretically taste the same and just be 10% bigger. The extra .1 cup of each ingredient would be a pain to measure out and could result in inconsistency.
You're confusing Temperment with tuning standard. With asysmetrical temperments the ratios of the intervals are different. A-440 verses 442 mostly doesn't matter. Perfect 12TET verses streched 12TET verses Well Temperment verses Mean Tone absolutely does matter-- and is directly analogous to different ratios of ingrediants in baking.
??
c# major's my favoritest key atm. i like how it makes me feel ever-so-slightily throwey-uppy inside, but like, the awesome version, of that feeling, i think__
Just call it D flat nerd
I will stand by this. The keys of d minor, c# minor, d flat major, b flat minor, a flat minor, and g flat/f sharp major are the best. The high flat/sharp count keys due to ease of playing and improvising at the keyboard, and d minor as A, the dominant of d, is the lowest key on the piano. It is obscure, but allows for a really dark and broody sort of bass sound impossible with other keys.
It’s definitely instrument specific. Playing in Ab minor on the bass is a nightmare 😂
@ definitely. I think I should just pick up guitar so each key is as easy as every other 😂
@@polygondeath2361Not with classical guitar!
C# minor is the goat key for piano IMO
@@polygondeath2361open strings on the guitar are an affordance that tends to favor C and the next few keys around the circle of fifths (G, D, A). Go ahead and throw in E because of two E strings (particularly the low one, for emphasizing big hits) and the fact that the 20th century repertoire on the instrument favors a blue third in that key, and you’re basically in G/Em anyways. For the rest you have to do barre chords more often than not, and think about more accidentals in chord names, and so lots of vernacular style players avoid those keys.
0:27 Better translation: Ideas for an aesthetic of tone art
what about the relation between keys? i thought the video would say something about it, like, it's easier to modulate from C major to G major rather than from C major to F# major for example; or for burrowing chords from one key to another, some will sound more consonant than others. Of course it's all context based
Me reading the title: "… Well no, but actually yes?"
Certain keys may be more practical for certain instruments, but a good musician can play in any key ;)
I would partly disagree on why key matters. When you transpose a melody on a piano by 1,2 or 3 octaves does it sound different or the same? The ratios are all the same, but does that mean that you hear the same thing?
Sometimes a key can be transposed and I hear no difference. Other times if it's transposed even a half step, and without any reference, I can identify that immediately and it just sounds odd. i definitely do NOT have perfect pitch, but I have been playing for a very long time, and for me sometimes key really makes a difference.
Another note about keyboards and black keys is that the black keys give a key signature its texture and shape. So if you're ever wondering why Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles stick to black keys, now you know why.
There is a simpler explanation: they're both blind. I am not blind, but I can easily play Stevie's clavinet backing to "Superstition" with a teatowel hiding the keys, because the differently sized "islands" of black keys, and even more importantly, the physical gaps between adjacent black notes, provide an instant tactile feedback closed loop for establishing which black key is which.
They can/could play perfectly well in any key, but it's much more relaxing and easier to groove, particularly to a pentatonic motif like the Superstition riff, with a key like Eb minor (whether sighted or not) because it virtually plays itself.
@Gottenhimfella exactly! i was hinting at that but I guess I phrased it poorly
@ I see. You were talking about something along the lines of "tactile texture" (rather than "sonic texture" which was what I thought you meant). Got it! And thanks for being so unYouTubishly gracious!
I'm a multi instrumentist hut even with that when I compose stuff I end up changing the keys when I rehearse with the musicians to better fit the registers
The way I see "Music theory" is that it's primarily about communication, and patterns.
It's a way to explain the development of ideas. Some things are more practical than others. And I think one of the downfall of theory, at least in how it's taught is that it has this idea of "Well this is how things must be because the theory says so". If anyone believes that then I think "theory" has been used in a way that isn't beneficial.
To me the most beneficial thing would probably be hearing intervals, or hearing chords. Being able to recognise those sounds, so that if you hear music you can play it without referring to sheet music/tab etc. Things like major scales, minor scales are also very useful, but there is a lot of stuff about them that is arbitrary. Really the most important thing is just the idea of a fixed pattern of selecting notes
Good vid. I've always wanted to play with the old tuning systems (I play the piano). Do you happen to know a way to get, let's say, 1/3 comma system on a Roland synthesizer?
I’m sorry I don’t. To get the meantone sound I used, I ripped the audio from Sibelius and then it through a program called melodyne.
@@jakethurston-doublebass Ok thanks. I have an option called "user scale" which allows me to tune the specific keys from "-64" to "+63". I've got to learn how to create the old temperament's with this.
It does matter for many reasons: instrumentation, metaphysics, semiotics
It does matter. But really much not anymore due to equal temperament. Composers before equal temperament used to abuse the unequally tempered scales for their “key colouration”. You’ll hear it. Flat keys sound flat. Sharp keys sound sharp. Natural keys, well, they sound natural. They understand the more accidentals you add, the more dissonance that is created, hence more “colouration” of the sound… so yes, they DO matter, but in an equally tempered scale? No
Thanks for the comment. My argument was they do still matter but now it has more to do with the timbre and practicality of the instrument playing in certain keys rather than the keys themselves having different tunings of intervals such as in meantome temperament.
Keys do matter but not only cuz of the things exposed. They still have a personality and mood, each one of them. One must be either an amateur, not instrumentist or ear blind not to see it
I'm a self-taught guitar, balalaika and melodica player and I don't know a shit what keys are
Can't say I agree that there is no difference in key when using equal temperament. Transposing songs can make a huge difference in feel and tonality regardless of instrumentation. A simple switch up from C to C# major feels as big as it ever has, producing songs that are distinct and memorable, and which instantly become blander when moved back down to C.
Right but the same would work with a transpose of B to C or G to G#. The change matters, the base key doesn't
@@gregoryfenn1462I don't have perfect pitch, but for me a given song feels different in different keys. Sometimes better, sometimes worse. And for singing, a song in different keys can feel drastically different for how I feel my voice. The reason is simple. When you transpose a piece by an octave, it sounds different because the absolute pitch of notes matters a lot. Also, absolute differences for note intervals change as well(even though the ratio stays the same). The same logic applies to transposing within an octave.
@@gregoryfenn1462 That's true, and that's why we have to be cagey about applying the same descriptions as centuries ago, before A=440 was a thing. We know from tuning forks, tuned metal percussion instruments, and pipe organs of early Baroque that A varied from A=465, about a semitone sharp compared to today (eg for some of the Leipzig organs Bach used) down to A=415 in many places, ~ a semitone flat (or even down to 392 - roughly a whole tone flat in a few locations)
"A simple switch up from C to C# major feels as big as it ever has, producing songs that are distinct and memorable, and which instantly become blander when moved back down to C" that's more about having been used to a C being very common, than something inherent in C# or the jump of just a semitone
Very nice and very good 👍 Subscribed❤❤❤New friend ❤❤❤❤
I've thought about this so much as I've been trying to learn piano. I just wanna play in C major >:(
Respectfully, I disagree that the only difference between Keys is caused by the instrument playing them. In my view, there is a deep and fundamental difference in the Keys. Whenever a song is transposed to a different Key, it changes the energy of the song. No Keys are inherently superior or inferior to any other; but for a variety of reasons - some I feel deep-down but it's hard to put it all in words - some songs and music pieces are much better suited to different Keys. We can talk about the theoretical reasons why it doesn't make a difference, relatively speaking, but one knows in real experience that it makes a difference. Just like in speaking. I mean, if someone with a very high voice narrated "Shawshank Redemption" instead of Morgan Freeman's baritone, would it "hit" your soul the same, even if their pitch intervals were all relatively equivalent to his, just transposed way up? On the other hand, if Dorothy sang "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" in The Wizard of Oz in a bass register (if she could), would that, in that scene, have hit you the same?
Very Interesting video, good Job.
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed!
Very nice and very good 👍 ❤Subscribed🎉🎉🎉
I disagree. The key of music does matter and this is why even people without perfect pitch (as seen in your comments) can often tell if something isn't in its original key via the Levitin effect. This is because different keys are indeed different keys as they are different pitches. Just as red is not the same color as blue, A is not the same note as C. The fact that music sounds "very similar" even after transposed can be likened to the fact that I can adjust the color settings on an image so Mario no longer has a red hat and blue overalls and he'll still look very similar to Mario. Mario in a different color pallet. It doesn't show that choice of colors to use in art is "meaningless" or "doesn't matter". Maybe the color red doesn't have some grand objective meaning, but it is objectively a different wavelength than other colors.
Ask a vocalist if the key matters.
I went over that in the 2nd half of the video
never thought that it could be so related to the actual instrument that's playing the piece. We're so used to VST's that it just becomes an afterthought. Very cool video!
Glad you enjoyed!
Very true. I once did a song with a small brass section, all with VSTs, and one person upon hearing it told me, yeah, great song, but trumpets would never play in that key. I picked the key for my voice, sorry virtual trumpet players.
I liked mean tone f# actually
To me the key of the song does matter, I have chromesthesia, I associate different keys with different colors. So to me the key does make a pretty big difference, actually.😁
Honestly - don't get it. You said "key don't matter if we going to play on a digital instrument" but they clearly does matter when i use my synthesizer in DAW despite perfect tuning i can get. And i clearly can hear different characteristics if i use my sampled or physical-modeling piano. Clearly i cat get those more innocent and childish\sad with hint of hope sounds from Cmaj and depressing\angry resolve from Dmin with standart tuning.And this characteristics dosen't go anywhere even if i start to pitchbent (in reasonable range) instrument btw.
Nice
Something felt off about the start
Wonderful content Jake, but delivered at breakneck speed. Kindly slow down! Your material will be more assimilable if you do. On another tack, if composing in equal temperament for the piano, say, then the quality of the sound in different keys will map largely onto a pitch range. But not only that; different pitch ranges engage a different proportion of each of the different registers of the piano (regions where there is one, two and three strings per key), so the sound will be qualitatively different.
Why does it matter NOT because of the key itself?
Dude. Don’t edit out your breathing in the video. I can’t stand listening to it, even though I would like to learn more about this topic.
Agreed. I don’t know why so many RUclipsrs do this. A shame, as I like music theory videos.
2:21 Doki Doki Literature Club OST be like
0:37 - foolishness. But let’s watch the video.
key doesn't matter. no one can tell, no one cares.
it only matter to singers for comfort, and to jazz musicians who, to be honest, don't know what they're doing anyway, and play anything they want and pretend it sounds good.
most of the time it sounds shit.
1:04 🤣
Can you talk a bit faster because my brain isn’t getting fried enough