Why are songs written in the key that they are?
September 12, 2011 2:24 PM   Subscribe

Are songs in particular musical keys supposed to have a particular character? I don't mean whether the song is in a major or minor key, but different fundamental notes. Should songs in A minor have a particular feelings associated with them, that songs in D minor wouldn't? Why do people write songs in one key, but not another? Is it mostly a matter of instrument tuning or are there some feelings that you need a particular key to evoke? Is it mostly arbitrary? Do individual songs feel different if you transpose them up or down a key or three?
posted by empath to Media & Arts (23 answers total) 21 users marked this as a favorite
 
A lot of people feel that certain keys sound certain ways; I too, subjectively experience it this way when I write songs (mostly pop fluff, FTR). But I think it's more likely a combination of how people physically play certain instruments in certain keys, and, possibly, how the placement of certain notes on, say, the guitar, piano or violin affect melody choice. All this not to mention how voicing choices (c.f., Bill Evans' famous fourths and fifths voicing) are differently available in different keys on different instruments. Definitely, transposing things up and down would affect this too, possibly.

BUT....I don't think there's any real science behind it or rather any particular proof since equal temperament now prevails in Western music. This is an excellent if somewhat technical book on what harmony was like in pre everything being tuned more or less to equal temperament.
posted by digitalprimate at 2:36 PM on September 12, 2011 [2 favorites]


I do find that the physical structure of the guitar does play a part in what key I am writing in. When I'm using bar chords, I feel a lot more comfortable with my hand around A or G so I find myself starting a lot of songs around that part of the fret board. Also, some chords are just easier on the hands. An F for example is a lot tougher on the hand and wrist than an E which is right beside it. These are by far not the most important things I am considering, but after writing a few songs I do find that they skew more toward more A's, G's and E's just because I feel more comfortable. It's really more of an unconscious side effect, and often I will change the key when I realize there are a bunch in the same key.
posted by Midnight Rambler at 2:39 PM on September 12, 2011


I've always felt that songs in different keys could take on a different character, but I also have perfect pitch so I don't know how much that has to do with it.

For some instruments (guitar, for example), songs are frequently written in a key that is easiest for the instrument to play. Additionally, a lot of marching band stuff is written in B-flat major, I suspect because concert B flat is "C" on a trumpet and clarinet (so those instruments would be able to mostly play the song without dealing with flats/sharps). Scales and tuning are built around that as well. For orchestra/concert applications, concert A is the standard tuning note.

Additionally, I remember hearing that Beethoven wrote his Eroica symphony in E flat major and titled it that because he felt that E flat major was a heroic-sounding key. Can't find a reference now, though (aside from this one).

B Minor was apparently considered the key of "passive suffering" in Baroque times.

Here's a lot of really great information, actually, regarding how composers choose keys based on the mood/tone, but different composers could have entirely different ideas about the mood/tone of a particular key!.
posted by agress at 2:40 PM on September 12, 2011 [4 favorites]


Keys are favorable by the physical conditions going on with the people playing the song.

People can only sing a certain range, people will change the key to fit the octave they can sing all the notes within, and they won't have to stretch to high or low. That's the biggest reason. Also it's way easier to play some instruments in a certain few keys. If you're in a band with horns, like school band, the open notes are usually Bb and Eb, so the composers pick flat-key signatures. If you're in Orchestra the open notes on Violin and Viola are like G D A E so you'll write a song with sharp key signatures.

If you change the key of a song, literally almost no one will notice, you'll just recognize the same song.

Some people have perfect pitch where they can tell you the name of any note, just like how you can tell the name of any color with your eyes.
So they can tell the song is playing in a different spot the same way you can tell if picture is more green then blue colored, but most people can't do that, it's a trait that only a few people have that has to be activated by early training in childhood.
posted by KHinds10 at 2:43 PM on September 12, 2011


Response by poster: So i'm gathering that the timbre of a song on a single instrument would be different just because of the physical character of the instrument, but if one were to play a tune in a pure sine wave transposed into different keys, it shouldn't feel any different at all (except to people with perfect pitch?)
posted by empath at 2:51 PM on September 12, 2011 [1 favorite]


I don't know exactly if this answers your question, but this wiki article has a decent suggestion of what the eight Gregorian modes corresponded to, emotion-wise, which may or may not have some overlap with the Greek modes. Especially check out the music samples to see if what you understand to be the "mood" or "character" of the piece matches what's described. YMMV.
posted by resurrexit at 2:53 PM on September 12, 2011


So i'm gathering that the timbre of a song on a single instrument would be different just because of the physical character of the instrument, but if one were to play a tune in a pure sine wave transposed into different keys, it shouldn't feel any different at all (except to people with perfect pitch?)

That is the mainstream view, yes.
posted by elektrotechnicus at 3:03 PM on September 12, 2011


So i'm gathering that the timbre of a song on a single instrument would be different just because of the physical character of the instrument, but if one were to play a tune in a pure sine wave transposed into different keys, it shouldn't feel any different at all (except to people with perfect pitch?)

Yeah, and back in the day before the tempered piano and such, when songs weren't easily transmittable between keys, this notion of different keys being associated with different feelings - and colors - (e.g. for Bach and many of his contemporaries, C was the red key and the naive/love key, etc) - was much more prominent.

Some modern/ish synesthetes and composers still abide by this notion, namely Michael Torke and Scriabin. Scriabin was perhaps most famous for his whole color organ thing, and associated each key with a color.

This idea of keys having certain feelings was made probably most prominent and codified by this dude named Schubart in the early 19th century.

Much more info here.
posted by Lutoslawski at 3:16 PM on September 12, 2011 [1 favorite]


^ah, someone linked to that already. apologies.
posted by Lutoslawski at 3:17 PM on September 12, 2011


Keyboard tuning has changed a lot over the development of keyboard instruments.

Prior to general and widespread adoption of equal temperament, various other temperaments hid fractions of the Pythagorean comma in various intervals, so that, for example, the major third between C and E would be a different interval than the major third between F and A. Well Temperament was an early tuning development that allowed most major and minor keys to be played in without sounding wrong. There's a paper somewhere the looks at Chopin's Preludes and intuits a piano tuning from it. Even today, a piano is tuned in stretched octaves in order to account for the overtone characteristics of piano strings.

In the Classical and Romantic periods of Western Music, there is an interplay between keys that instruments have traditionally played best in (the flute, in a pastoral setting, F major) and the technological developments that allow an instrument to play in other keys (for example Boehm's mechanical innovations for the flute).

These days, (with pop music) what key a song is in is mostly a matter of what chords are easiest for the guitarist to compress under their fingers. A fret lobster helps get around that crutch, as does scordatura (alternate tunings). Although there is a crazy story that Joni Mitchell uses a guitar rig when playing live that pulls from the guitar in her hands, routes the sound through a computer set with whatever tuning she's selected, then outputs sampled or transposed sound in that tuning. It's said that she's recorded or composed in some 51 guitar tunings, so I suppose something like this is easier than switching guitars after every song.
posted by Prince_of_Cups at 3:22 PM on September 12, 2011 [5 favorites]


Best answer: The choice of key is mostly arbitrary.

But it's not irrelevant. The main reason it matters are that a given instrument, including voice, is going to handle different keys differently. This affects two things:

(1) Ease of playing.

A pianist naturally wants to play in C major or A minor; a guitarist will be especially comfortable in E minor; brass players prefer "flat" keys, etc. So a composer writing for orchestra may prefer to use B-flat major if they want to emphasize the brass, but might prefer D major if they want the bright sound of violins playing open strings.

Now, these very facts are themselves arbitrary. For instance, I'm a guitarist, so you might think I like playing in E minor more than I like playing in E-flat minor. After all, I just said E minor is especially comfortable for guitarists! But I was oversimplifying, and so is anyone who makes this kind of claim. I've recently been playing "Little Wing" by Jimi Hendrix, who certainly knew how to write a good guitar part. Guess what: it's not in the "guitar" keys of E minor or D minor or A minor. It's in E-flat minor. It sounds wonderful and resonant, with plenty of open strings. He tuned his guitar down, so E-flat minor behaves the way E minor does in "standard" tuning. (You can similarly alter the fretboard by putting a capo on the guitar, which is like tuning all the strings up.)

(2) Tone quality.

It's hard to generalize about this. But your choice of key is inevitably going to affect the tone quality of the instruments.

For instance, a guitar playing in E minor (again, in standard tuning) will tend to play more open (non-fretted) strings, which sound different from fretted strings. If a song is in C major with a high note of G for the singer, that's a note I can barely sing. My voice will tend to sound a bit thin and strained as I reach for the G. Drop the key down to B-flat or A, and the high note will also drop to F or E respectively, so not only will I have an easier time but my voice will be more clear and resonant.

I would be very skeptical about claims like saying B minor evokes "suffering." Yeah, sure it does ... but so do all minor keys.

"G major is very cheerful!" Yeah ... just like all major keys.

Colorful claims about a specific key (not major or minor in general, but "B minor" or "D major) are "too good to check." In fact, they're essentially impossible to disprove.

People who make claims about absolute pitch having great significance are likely to have ears that are trained to detect absolute pitch, as opposed to relative pitch. Relative pitch (which I'm good at sensing) is much more common than absolute pitch (which I can't detect). If, like me, you only have a strong sense of relative pitch, not absolute pitch, you're very attuned the ways a piece in C major expresses something different from the same piece adapted in C minor, but you're mostly indifferent to whether the piece is played in C or B major.

Someone who can detect absolute pitch, on the other hand, is attuned to the difference between C and B major. So the difference might be quite vivid to this person. But is that representative of how 99% of listeners actually experience the music? I don't think so. (It's a surprisingly difficult question to answer with any confidence, since it's hard to get into someone else's head.)

Another factor: since it's rare to have an inborn intuition for absolute pitch, people with a sense of absolute pitch have usually been trained to have it in formal lessons. Why is that important? Well, if they took formal piano lessons, they learned to hear C major as fundamental. Then they moved on to get comfortable in fairly close keys like G major and F major (which both share 6 of the 7 same notes as C major). A key like E major, F-sharp major, C-sharp minor, or D-sharp minor would seem more "advanced" and far away from the basic, fundamental keys like C major and G major. To someone with this kind of training, they might sincerely be able to describe how they experience B minor or C-sharp minor (which have few notes in common with C major) as more dissonant or strained or adventurous or turbulent than A minor (which has exactly the same notes as C major).

But that's a highly arbitrary by-product of their specific musical education. In contrast, anyone who can hear and who grows up in the Western world hears major keys as happy, minor keys as sad, etc.

So, in conclusion, absolute pitch matters a little, but it's relatively insignificant next to relative pitch.
posted by John Cohen at 3:25 PM on September 12, 2011 [11 favorites]


Slate Article on various tuning systems and how they can affect key character
posted by canoehead at 3:27 PM on September 12, 2011 [1 favorite]


John Cohen's answer is awesome, but I'd throw something else out there that's a little different. I think he's completely right that key, as such, doesn't matter, but even people with relatively poor absolute pitch can tell when something is "too high" or "too low," and most people have different emotional reactions to things depending on where a given song is set. You want an upbeat, summery pop hit? Paging sopranos and mezzos. You want a brooding, ominous, sepulchral dirge? Time to bust out the men's choir and double down on the bass section. Etc. Flipping the two will just feel wrong to a lot of people, and can actually be played for laughs sometimes.

So while the difference between C major and D major is probably only something someone with perfect absolute pitch would be able to notice, pitching the same tune an octave higher or lower is both something a lot of people would notice and something which may well change the emotional affect of the song.

Also, synesthesia can really screw up this whole calculus.
posted by valkyryn at 3:42 PM on September 12, 2011


Excellent answers all above (i.e., key is comfortable for the instrument or in some cases sounds better on the instrument (brass players all know that avoiding the third valve is a good idea, whenever possible), some people with an excellent sense of pitch do experience different keys as fundamentally different (e.g., B major sounds wrong for a song compared to G major), very thorough answer by John Cohen so I'm not going to repeat any of the things).

I just finished Oliver Sacks' Musicophilia and he mentions some people with synesthesia who see different keys in different colors (e.g., A major is one color while C major is another). While synesthesia is rather rare, an extremely tuned sense of pitch isn't. Sacks also writes of other neurological oddities (for lack of a better term, though in many cases, the oddities isn't a hindrance but seen as a miracle) that are quite interesting in how they deal with key. He also writes about people who have their own internal soundtrack that they write from and whatever is in their head is in a certain key because it sounds "right" in their head in this key.
posted by Brian Puccio at 4:33 PM on September 12, 2011


Oh, hey, look at that, take an hour to write a post and someone else mentions synesthesia.
posted by Brian Puccio at 4:34 PM on September 12, 2011


Everyone knows that D minor is the saddest of all keys...
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 7:16 PM on September 12, 2011 [5 favorites]


Theoretically, all major keys should sound the same; all minor keys should sound the same.

Intuitively, there seems to be something unique about each key, which I can't put into words.
posted by ovvl at 7:29 PM on September 12, 2011


B-flat is a great key for not-expert pianists who are improvising because it's more difficult to accidentally hit two black keys at once.
posted by thinkingwoman at 7:41 PM on September 12, 2011


I Don't think someone has mentioned this:

As far as changing from song to song within a program, keys are very important to the meta-structure of a concert or album. Keys have meaning in relation to each other.

For example, if you went to a concert, and every single song they played was in E, the songs would start to get a little tiresome.

I've remember reading an interview with Trey Anastasio of Phish where he was describing how he would spend hours reshuffling the setlist after every show to try and get the perfect sequence down. DJ's talk about how within a set, they choose keys to build up tension/release; the feeling of going up and up and up this roller coaster over the coarse of an hour within a set, to climax and be let down again.

That last hanging chord of a song - there's still a taste of that in your pallete when the chord of the next song starts, even with that gap of silence in between. The new song can sound fresh, ominous, cheery, etc etc in relation. Any effect you can think of a particular harmonic progression in a song having, can happen there too. More obviously, songs often modulatate (meaning they 'abruptly' shift to another key) mid-song for effect (see Trucker Modulation). Composers of classical music use modulations too, but often in a more crafted/structured way than what you see on that link.
posted by victory_laser at 9:06 PM on September 12, 2011 [1 favorite]


One more point, building on my previous comment: although I said the absolute key (C instead of B) matters somewhat, notice that the various ways it matters are very haphazard, diffuse, all over the place. They don't converge on any one insight into the expressive power of music. A given key is going to make it a little easier for some instruments and harder for others, and easier for one singer but harder for another singer. So, again, it matters in many little, technical ways, but these don't lead up to any big, profound, emotional conclusion like "B minor is the most tragic key!"

This is in contrast with, for instance, the difference between any major key (HAPPY! or relaxed/serene!) and any minor key (SAD! or serious/determined!). These aren't tiny, technical differences that go in all sorts of arbitrary directions; they're big, expressive differences that converge on a clear, fundamental point.

If you don't perceive the fact that minor keys are almost inevitably sadder than major keys, you are profoundly missing out on what traditional Western music is all about. (To be clear, I only say "traditional Western music" to exclude exotic things like atonal composers or music from other cultures that's unplayable on piano. What I mean by "traditional Western music" probably includes almost everything in your iPod.)

If, on the other hand, you have no idea what the expressive difference is between a piece of music in the key of A, B, C, D, E, F, or G, that doesn't mean much except that you probably don't have "perfect pitch" (absolute pitch). So, you won't be able to sing a song a cappella in the right key with no reference pitch, but this is not going to stop you from appreciating music.

(Major vs. minor is just one example of many. You could also look at the difference between music that's very diatonic vs. music with a lot of chromatic notes; that's also about relative pitch, not absolute pitch.)
posted by John Cohen at 10:01 AM on September 13, 2011


I came in here to say what Prince_of_Cups said.

There's a book by Rita Steblin called A History of Key Characteristics in the 18th and Early 19th Centuries; it's fun to read about the characteristics that people ascribed to keys in the days of unequal temperaments.

Examples
:

D major: The key of triumph, of Hallejuahs, of war-cries, of victory-rejoicing. Thus, the inviting symphonies, the marches, holiday songs and heaven-rejoicing choruses are set in this key.

F major: Complaisance & calm.

G major: Everything rustic, idyllic and lyrical, every calm and satisfied passion, every tender gratitude for true friendship and faithful love....
posted by bassjump at 7:28 PM on September 13, 2011


For example, if you went to a concert, and every single song they played was in E, the songs would start to get a little tiresome.

I went to that concert. It was David Sylvian around 1988. It was awful.
posted by ovvl at 7:48 PM on September 13, 2011


Absolute pitch matters because human hearing is absolute. Our ears have a finite (and non-linear) frequency response. Think about the example you gave of an arrangement of sine waves, which presumably removes the considerations of individual instruments. It doesn't, however, remove the considerations of the ear. If you played your arrangement in C major, and then transposed the song to F# major simply by raising every pitch by the same amount, the two versions would be quite distinguishable, perhaps even to a musical layperson. The second song would sound much "higher" than the first.

Now think about this: if you continue to raise the pitch, you could transpose the song up to B major, and it would be much higher and much easier to distinguish than the original. But wait a minute, you say, I don't have to raise the pitches eleven half steps to transpose to B major, I can just drop the pitches one half step. The song will now be in B major, and much more difficult to distinguish from the original C major arrangement. So now you have two different transpositions to B major, one that raises the pitches and is completely different, and one that lowers the pitches and is nearly indistinguishable. Which one is the "correct" transposition?

The answer of course is neither of them, and this gets to the heart of what it actually means to transpose. You can't transpose a song without affecting it's arrangement, and this is a consequence of the absolute nature of the human ear. Even when the relative pitches remain the same, the absolute pitches affect how you perceive the sound. The reason the original song in C major and the transposition down a half step to B major sound the same is not just because all the relative pitches are the same, but also (and importantly) because the absolute pitches are very close. To prove this to yourself, just play a simple C major triad at both ends of the piano. Same relative pitches, same "key" even, but two very different sounds.

When you view transposition (a phenomenon that exploits the continuous nature of sound frequency) in terms of arrangement (a phenomenon that owes its importance to the finite nature of human hearing), it becomes clearer why absolute pitch matters. It also nicely explains the peculiarities of individual instrument transposition, because when you transpose on an instrument you often change the arrangement of that part, since instruments can't transpose as easily and arbitrarily as computer generated sine waves.
posted by grog at 10:42 PM on January 11, 2012


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