Key Discussion

[PhilMeyers]

This is more of a general music question, but as I play more music (I have recently promoted myself from terrible to bad), I find I have an affinity for tunes in certain keys. I'm not talking about the degree of difficulty of playing in that key (though it does seem to be inversely proportional to the keys I like), but about which ones strike your fancy and why. I am drawn to A major-it seems to be energetic and moody at the same time (See my avatar. And no, I'm not a Scotsman). I also like the quirkiness of G minor and the brightness of B flat major. These are all relative finger-busters on a C/G anglo. You?

[Patrick Brown]

From my choir days I remember my

choir director talking about a theory about keys.

Each key was associated with a different emotions.

This was in regard to mardigals. D was the key of love.

[Chris Timson]

I have to bow to other people's knowledge, since nowadays we live in an equal-tempered world, but I thought different keys lost most of that individuality when the well-tempered clavier hit its stride back in Bach's time.

 

Chris

[grumpyhermit]

I am not a musician, so I can't speak from any personal knowledge base, but I can paraphrase an interview Frank Zappa did with Guitar Player magazine. He was quite scornful of Hollywood music scoring, comparing the use of scoring to the most obvious and blatant of laugh tracks. According to FZ, the cellos signal dramatic moments, a major 7th chord signals love scenes, etc. And how many times does a saxophone start playing when a sex scene begins? So apparently there are still certain keys/instrument combos that evoke particular emotional states.

 

"Humor rules in the timbre domain." (Frank Zappa)

 

Bob G. Evans

[Lester Bailey]

Key or mode descriptions from Charpentier's Regles de Composition ca. 1682

 

C major: gay and warlike

C minor: obscure and sad

D major: joyous and very warlike

D minor: serious and pious

Eb major: cruel and hard

E major: quarrelsome and boisterous

E minor: effeminate, amorous, plaintive

F major: furious and quick-tempered subjects

F minor: obscure and plaintive

G major: serious and magnificent

G minor: serious and magnificent

A major: joyful and pastoral

A minor: tender and plaintive

B major: harsh and plaintive

B minor: solitary and melancholic

Bb major: magnificent and joyful

Bb minor : obscure and terrible

[David Barnert]

There are three senses in which different keys might be said to have different characters. One, as you have mentioned, is how a particular key feels on a given instrument. The second is that some people have "perfect pitch" (or "absolute pitch") meaning they can recognize notes and keys without having to refer to a known note. Most people don't have it (oddly, in some primitive cultures, everybody has it). Some that do describe different notes and keys as having colors or emotions, as you describe. Perhaps you have perfect pitch. I don't. Could you sing a Bb, for instance, on command without having heard a known note in the recent past?

 

The third sense is that on instruments tuned to other temperaments than equal temperament, each key will have its own character because certain notes and intervals will be more or less in tune. One key might have the 5ths in tune but not the 3rds, for example, while another has it the other way around.

[Michael Reid]

Although the instruments I play are -- as far as I know! -- equal-tempered, I have long associated different feelings or sensations with different keys. I think I first noticed this as a teenager playing piano.

 

[Going out on a limb, sounding even weirder] To me, for example, there's a huge difference in the characters of E flat major and D major. I think of E flat as round and full, maybe a bit soft -- while D is noticeably more angular, although not as far in that direction as B.

 

Of course, I can't help but notice that my description of E flat is not in the same ballpark as the c. 1682 description cited above!

 

I don't have perfect pitch, but I can reliably tell the key of a piece of music. I gave a first listen tonight to a CD I just bought (Noel Hill and Tony McMahon), and I could tell within perhaps two seconds that the first cut is in F.

[David Barnert]

I don't have perfect pitch, but I can reliably tell the key of a piece of music. I gave a first listen tonight to a CD I just bought (Noel Hill and Tony McMahon), and I could tell within perhaps two seconds that the first cut is in F.

Also:

I have long associated different feelings or sensations with different keys. I think I first noticed this as a teenager playing piano.

Isn't that pretty much the definition of perfect pitch?

 

A story:

 

When I was an undergrad in the mid 1970s at Brandeis, I played Cello in the orchestra. The conductor was the chairman of the Music department, Robert Koff, who had been the original 2nd Violinist in the Juilliard String Quartet. It was well known in the Music Department that Koff didn't have perfect pitch.

 

Well, one day we were rehearsing Schubert's 9th ("Great") Symphony in C major. It starts with a Horn solo, with the notes C,D,E. Here's the abc for anyone who's interested:

 

X:1

T:Horn Solo

M:4/4

L:1/4

Q:100

K:C

c2de|A>Bc2|d>ec2|g2de|A>Bc2|d>ec2|d3e|c"violins"ag(3e/g/f/||

 

The Horn player was David Hoose, now a respected conductor in his own right. Just for grins , he played it in C#. Nobody noticed until the violins came in with their A on the 2nd beat of the 8th measure. It sounded like an Ab, and you could see them all trying to pinch it up into tune before the whole thing collapsed.

Edited October 3, 2003 by David Barnert

[Michael Reid]

I don't have perfect pitch, but I can reliably tell the key of a piece of music. I gave a first listen tonight to a CD I just bought (Noel Hill and Tony McMahon), and I could tell within perhaps two seconds that the first cut is in F.

Also:

I have long associated different feelings or sensations with different keys. I think I first noticed this as a teenager playing piano.

Isn't that pretty much the definition of perfect pitch?

 

A story:

 

When I was an undergrad in the mid 1970s at Brandeis, ...

If a musician as good as you says so, who am I to disagree?

 

Actually, I don't think my pitch is perfect, based on two observations:

 

- If I'm starting without a reference note, I can't necessarily sing or hum any given note ... I'll be close, but not necessarily on.

 

- If I hear just a single note, I can usually, but not always, identify it. I need the context of a few more notes to be accurate.

 

I love the story about the horn player! I've got one of my own. In high school, I was rehearsal pianist for a production of "Oklahoma!" One day when I must have been particularly spacey, I accidentally started up one of the songs -- "People Will Say We're in Love," I think -- in the wrong key, a half-step off from how it was written. I had the music pretty well in my head at that point, so I wasn't paying attention to the score. A few bars into it, I realized what I had done, and a wave of panic came over me ... I wasn't sure I could transpose the entire number on the spot.

 

Fortunately, the director called "Cut!" for some unrelated reason. After the actors regrouped, I started the song intro in the right key. No one noticed my mistake.

[yerpalal]

MR, sounds like you have what is sometimes called "piano pitch" people memorize the sounds of the notes by constant exposure.

[Paul Groff]

Hello all,

 

I love the way this subject brings together the technical details and the stories that musicians enjoy. David's first post made excellent distinctions in a very understated way. May I expand on it just a little?

 

The equal tempered scale is not the only scale that has no [different] "colors of the [different] keys." In regular meantone temperament (e. g. the well-known 1/4 comma meantone that David and I have written about in this Forum), the internal intervals are the same in every key, as long as the correct enharmonics are used. So the RELATIVE intervals of the c major scale (c, d, e, f, g, a, b, c) are the same as the relative intervals of the Bb scale (Bb, c, d, eb, f, g, a, bb) as long as you use the correct values for bb and eb (i. e. NOT a# and d#). In 1/4 comma, ALL fifths in every key are equally narrow from just, ALL major thirds are pure, etc.. So there are no different colors to the keys in (regular) meantone, unless you are forced (e. g. by a piano keyboard) to use a G# where you should have an Ab (and if you do so, you are no longer in meantone). However, the flat keys in meantone are pitched (on average) higher than the same keys in equal temperament, and the sharp keys lower. This means that (in 1/4 comma) a modulation from c to Bb will create a smaller diffference in PITCH than the same modulation in equal temperament -- but in meantone, as in ET, the intervals within the two keys are the same.

 

The "colors (or characters) of the keys" in the sense that David defined (each key having a different balance of good and bad intervals) come into play in the "irregular or modified meantone" and "well- temperaments." It is now believed by many (most?) scholars that Bach was NOT using equal-temperament as Chris seems to imply above, but a temperament in which the fifths, thirds, etc. were not the same in different keys, creating an interesting effect: key "color" ("flava?") changes when the piece modulates from one key to another. The prominently published misconception that Bach established equal temperament has been discussed by Wim Wakker elsewhere in this forum. Today's theorists often use the term "well-temperament" to describe temperaments like these, with 12 tones to the octave and in which there are no "wolf" or unusable fifth intervals, but in which these intervals are different in different keys. See Jorgensen, "Tuning," etc.

 

And as long as there are "early music/authentic performance" advocates, avant-garde "microtonalists," vocalists in the traditional styles of barbershop, Bulgarian harmony, and blues; as long as there are bagpipes (whether Highland, Uilleann, Northumbrian, european, or middle easterm), as long as there are a few Jeffries anglos with untouched reeds -- need I go on? -- we will thankfully not inhabit an equal-tempered world.

 

Paul

Edited October 3, 2003 by Paul Groff

[David Barnert]

If a musician as good as you says so, who am I to disagree?

 

Actually, I don't think my pitch is perfect, based on two observations:

 

- If I'm starting without a reference note, I can't necessarily sing or hum any given note ... I'll be close, but not necessarily on.

 

- If I hear just a single note, I can usually, but not always, identify it. I need the context of a few more notes to be accurate.

Michael-

 

Thanks, first of all.

 

There is still much disagreement on exactly what is perfect pitch, whether it is possible to learn it if you are not born with it, and to what degree you can partially have it.

 

Contrast your situation to mine, however.

 

I have excellent "relative pitch," that is, if I know what note a tune starts on, or what key it's in, I can usually write or play it without having to use trial and error. I can follow modulations in classical pieces, even if I don't know what key it's in (now he's setting up a modulation to V, that was a major III chord, tonicizing iii minor, that sort of thing).

 

But I am entirely unable to guess what key a piece is in from thin air. I can hum traditional tunes, classical music, commercials, popular songs, movie music, etc., but have no idea if I'm humming them in the key in which I've heard them. If you tell me to sing a G, for instance, I might come close only because I know about where G fits in my vocal range. If you told me to tune a variable oscillator to G, I would have no clue where to start (I'd probably try to hum under my breath and tune it to that). If you surreptitiously replaced all the reeds in my concertina with reeds a third low, I suspect I wouldn't notice.

 

I spent a year, while I was in high school, carrying an A=440 fork in my pocket, trying to learn to predict what it sounds like, but no luck.

 

I think it's pretty safe to say that I do not have perfect pitch or anything like it. Also that you have something I don't have. Whether or not we call it "perfect pitch" is of little importance.

 

And Paul-

I love the way this subject brings together the technical details and the stories that musicians enjoy. David's first post made excellent distinctions in a very understated way. May I expand on it just a little? ...

Thank you. That was great. I've read a lot of books, but you've clearly tuned more instruments than I have. I wish I had the experiential familiarity with the subject that you have.

[JimLucas]

MR, sounds like you have what is sometimes called "piano pitch" people memorize the sounds of the notes by constant exposure.

"Piano pitch"? That's the first I've encountered that term.

 

"Perfect pitch", on the other hand, means different things to different people, but always seems to include a component of being able to identify or produce a given pitch without an external reference.

 

Thus in one interpretation, the ability to hum a C on cue is a (limited) form of perfect pitch. As I recall, an English experiment with school children some decades ago established that this "talent" could be taught to most people, though there might be a few individuals (David?) who failed to learn. A follow-up some years later indicated that the abilitiy was often retained even when not consciously used.

 

The ability to identify the pitch of any note, played on any instrument, just by hearing it is a much more extensive version of the same thing, as is the ability to sing arbitrary pitches on demand. A refined version of this might be the ability to tell whether an A is 440 or 442.

 

I believe it's been fairly well established that "perfect pitch" is basically having a memory of what one or more pitches sound like, similar to our memory for colors. With pitches, however, there's another form of memory which for most people is stronger... relative pitch. This is not surprising, since understanding speech depends on perceiving relative frequencies of the different formatn frequencies of vowels. When someone says "George", you understand the word regardless of the pitch of the person's voice.

 

That absolute and relative pitch perception are two independent skills is supported by a friend of mine, who has perfect pitch, but no relative pitch. If he learns a song in one key and wants to sing it in another, he *has* to mentally transpose each note as he comes to it, and then sing the note in the new key. He has become quite adept at this, while the very idea simply boggles my mind.

[Eric Root]

To get back to the topic of keys: given equal temperament, and the presence of all notes within its range on the instruments, keys will differ depending on how _inherently_ chromatic the instrument is. In instruments that are inherently diatonic but with the extra notesadded, like three-row anglos and button boxes, every key is fairly different in terms of what chords can be played, where you can drone, what ornaments are doable, etc. Englishes are not really more chromatic than, for instance, pianos, because as you add sharps or flats, you do lose some of the chord notes you can do, or at least the stretches get a little much to leave in all the chord notes besides the 1,3, and 5, and you can't barre some of the fifths. I would guess MacCanns and Cranes probably get into some uncomfortable stretches when trying to play some things. Probably Haydens are more nearly the same in all keys.

 

-Eric Root-

[JimLucas]

Probably Haydens are more nearly the same in all keys.

I think that's in *some* -- possibly even *many* -- keys, but not *all*. Even the Hayden has "edges", where the pattern breaks down.

[Paul Groff]

Eric, Jim, and all

 

You are absolutely correct about this very important point. Of course, great musicians can make great music with 9 notes (Scottish pipes), 8 notes, or even "1" (some drums etc.). And they will use the different keys/modes available on their instrument to advantage, rather than regarding them as limitations. But some keys do seem more logical or easier to finger on certain instruments - especially to a beginner on first acquaintance with the instrument; in part I think this is what David meant about different keys "feeling different" on an instrument.

 

When people (not you) write about the limitations of the 30 key anglo and how it's so much easier to play in one or two keys, I often wonder how they would react to a modern piano keyboard if they encountered it for the first time as an adult music beginner. Clearly, generations of dedicated musicians (who often started young and had intensive instruction) have brought piano technique in many styles to remarkable heights. When you can really play the piano its pavement of white keys and snaggletoothed layout of black keys seem inevitable and different keys fall easily under your fingers. Did anyone see the archival Art Tatum footage last night on PBS? Yet to an adult novice I think the logic and even the manipulation of the piano keyboard create more "unevenness of different keys" than a 30 key ango or a 48 key english. I love the idea of the Hayden duet, and its logic and "capo-like" transposition capability are appealing to a lot of adult beginners. But the best MacCann players of a hundred years ago reached heights few of today's Hayden players (or players of any concertina!) are likely to reach. Keyboards on which different keys feel the same are not a requisite for incredible music making. Musicianship (achieved through listening, instruction, and practice, practice, practice) is the requisite, and I have seen it expressed on every instrument, though not by every player.

 

My music teachers told me this long ago; unfortunately I am a slow student and am still relearning the lesson: The grass is not greener on the other side. A different kind of instrument, or even a better instrument, will only very occasionally solve your problems. Patience, patience, and serve an apprenticeship to your instrument, and everyday you will find new opportunities for expression within its "limitations."

 

Having said all that, I do favor certain keys on the anglo for certain sounds. I definitely do not live up to my own ideal of anglo technique (yet, if I ever will), but more than that I consciously set my instruments up so that different keys have different sounds (chord and drone options, "octaving" options, even the temperament) because I am more interested in variety of expression than the mechanical evenness some seem to want from their machines.

 

P. S. I am sorry for the long postings & will try to shorten them...they come from my mind racing while looking after my new child...it's hard to focus on a single point.

 

Paul

[JimLucas]

A different kind of instrument, or even a better instrument, will only very occasionally solve your problems.

Unlikely to "solve" one's "problems", but may well lead to new opportunities and adventures.

 

I am sorry for the long postings...

 

I'm not. Your post was excellent.