Is any professional music out of key?

[JohnWThompson]

Dunno guys. Generally when you move a semitone you're out of key. Not to put too fine a point on it. When I write I try to use the axiom and to advantage. I slip in a note of only a semitone displacement. I think the closer you look at this stuff, the more blurry it gets. Listen. This is two cents - take it or leave it. Use what works. The info about all the nursury rhymes and old songs having a note out of key or dissonant, I didn't make it up, but I'm not a teacher either. Sorry

[JohnWThompson]

Beatles did it - it's everywhere. Whatever.

[jancivil]

they all have one note out of key. Happy Birthday son

which note is out of key in Happy Birthday

The second syllable of the person's name.

No.
It's f**king LA. "Dear John-ny" = Do-Ti-La, from the major scale. Usu. harmonize by vi, or vi6

[Farnaby]

Generally when you move a semitone you're out of key

Not at all, any scale is made up of a combination of tones and semitones. C D E F, tone tone semitone....and yet we are still in C major.
I think you need to rethink this a bit

[jancivil]

Dunno guys. Generally when you move a semitone you're out of key. Not to put too fine a point on it.

good grief

There are two semitones in a major scale, for example.
Harmonic minor scale enjoys three of them.

[Farnaby]

I didn't make it up

I think you might have done in this case accidentally or otherwise. A lot of very well known tunes stay pretty much in key. Of course there are plenty that don't too. Some of Schoenberg's best loved tunes do have the occasional accidental.

Maybe you are making the wider point that 'interesting' music tends to push boundaries a bit. In which case I would agree with you.

[melomood]

If a musician intends a piece to bit a little dark & out of key
Is it really 'out of key' ?

[vurt]

they all have one note out of key. Happy Birthday son

which note is out of key in Happy Birthday

if im singing, all of them ...

[jancivil]

"Atonal, enharmonic, chromatic, microtonal...

These types of music are an "acquired taste"."

Tonal music in all major key is an acquired taste, FFS; any music is, leaving at best some dipshit argument to nature to be made. This is like the dude who asserted major key announces its tonic very obviously while 'modes are flaky'. No, it's just one's level of interest is narrower or shallower than some others.

NB: "enharmonic" is not even vaguely a word that describes a kind of music, it's a technical term which will mean one of three things: the equivalent in equal temperament of two notes with a different sign, eg., D# and Eb are enharmonically equivalent; an enharmonic scale (in some form of rational intonation) which respects and describes differences between the two (1:1; 256:243 vs 16:15; 10:9 vs 9:8, 32:27 vs 6:5 etc); or the enharmonic genus from ancient music theory, which looks at the difference between 3 5:4s and 2:1, this specifically known as a diesis (128:125); or a more general term describing things technically by smaller than semitone intervals, mostly known as commas as well.

[jancivil]

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[jancivil]

If you check, all the classic melodies that have stood up forever, they all have one note out of key. Happy Birthday song and so forth.

Do you mean accidentals?

Just trying to answer his question in a practical way bro.

There's no practicality in telling people LA out of DO RE MI FA SOL LA TI is out of key, 'bro'.
DO TI LA, to a vi chord before the turnaround is conventional as f**k anyway.