No, he says explicitly that most dance music is in a minor key. He uses his data to present which keys HIS tracks are in. There are many threats to validity here, but the part that you are sweeping under the rug is his experience.robojam wrote:That's not actually what he says - he says that most dance music is in a minor key, but he bases it on his own music only:ghettosynth wrote:He also asserts, based simply on his experience, that most dance music is in a minor key.
So what is the most popular key you ask? Well, I used Mixed In Key to look at the key of my 1500+ dance tracks from the past five years
He doesn't bother to separate out the tracks in major keys because they are few and far between, in his data. He then asserts that, in his experience, this is generally true.
In my experience, it is also generally true, but more true for some styles than others. There are also some styles that it's probably not true, happy hardcore, and some house styles come to mind.
It's not intended to be "science." You're projecting more there than is presented. It's a guide for producers and DJs who are into what is referred to as "harmonic mixing", which is an aggrandizement of simply mixing in key.It may or may not be true that most dance music is in minor keys, it's going to be guesswork really and I'm not going to comment either way as I don't know, but there's something decidedly non-scientific about using your own creations to extrapolate that everyone else does something the same way.
He has 1500 records, that's actually a pretty good sample. There is absolutely bias in that sample and consequently limits to how well his observations generalize. There's probably little bias, however, in the key distribution itself. By that, I mean, I think that it's reasonable to assert that Am/C are the most popular keys. He may play a style that favors minor keys, e.g. trance which would skew the distribution of minor to major.
That said, I'm telling you what every musician who's been to more than a couple of underground events knows, most dance music IS in a minor key. For some styles, notably trance, most of it is in a minor key.
But, since you seem unconvinced by the assertions of people who do have the experience to make such assertions, I'll give you data to back it up.
I went to Beatport and simply counted the keys of the top 10 tracks on the front page and in the trance category. They list them on the tracks. This is certainly a reasonably random sample with respect to this question. There is no systematic reason to believe that the charts somehow favor a key today that they don't normally favor. If you want to argue that it's biased towards popular tracks, then I say so what, most bedroom producers want to create popular tracks.
From the main page, 6 out of 10 are in a minor key. This supports the assertion that most dance music is in a minor key. From the trance page, 8 out of 10 are in a minor key, this supports the assertion that minor keys are more dominant in trance than they are in dance music in general.
Obviously, this isn't "science" either. For a proper study we would sample randomly and use appropriate statistical tests to show a difference in the populations. But, it is ADDITIONAL evidence nonetheless, and for the purposes of this discussion, should be more than sufficient to convince you that the statement "most dance music is in a minor key", is largely true.
