What's the point of key?

[jimmymus]

If I'm playing a song solo, it doesn't matter what key I play a song in. Let's take for example, "London Bridge is Falling Down". I can transpose that into any major key and it sounds the same. It's the same song. Thus, what key a song is in is irrelevant as long as it remains a major key.

So, basically if someone could just tell me how accurate this next statement is that would be great:

The type of key, such as major, minor, jazz, whatever, determines the mood. The key itself, aka the root note, is only important when playing with OTHER people because of the problem of harmony. Each person, if playing by themselves, could play in whatever key they wanted, but together they need to be in the same key so they harmonize.

Right?

[tetsuneko]

That's the way I always thought it was.. But then again, I don't know notes or music theory, always preferred Hz/ms approach over note/timesig..

[Gregjazz]

If I'm playing a song solo, it doesn't matter what key I play a song in. Let's take for example, "London Bridge is Falling Down". I can transpose that into any major key and it sounds the same. It's the same song. Thus, what key a song is in is irrelevant as long as it remains a major key.

Well, key isn't irrelevant at all when you consider timbral differences as well as the ranges of instruments and which ranges sound best.

The type of key, such as major, minor, jazz, whatever, determines the mood.

I tend not to think in terms of keys, but rather a more general sense of tonal space.

I don't think the key determines the mood. It may influence the effectiveness of the mood you are trying to portray...

The key itself, aka the root note, is only important when playing with OTHER people because of the problem of harmony. Each person, if playing by themselves, could play in whatever key they wanted, but together they need to be in the same key so they harmonize.

Right?

Not necessarily. It really depends on the sort of music that you are going for. You could certainly have all the instruments playing in their own key and still harmonize. It would be a different sort of harmonization than in a traditional consonant sense, but harmonization nonetheless.

[hersoot]

I don't know why, exactly, but pitch makes a differnce to my ears. Something played in c minor conveys a different mood than, for example, g minor. But my ear is adaptable; I think like you that the key is important mainly when playing with other musicians, especially ones who play woodwinds - it's easier to tuna fish.

[deastman]

That sounds good on paper, because the relationship between the notes remains the same, regardless of key. The reality, however, is that you'll end up with the entire song shifted to play lower frequencies or higher frequencies, depending on what key you choose. Remember that the range of human hearing is not infinite, and your choice of key will have a significant impact on the overall frequency makeup of your song.

Beyond that, of course, is the obvious point that many instruments other than electronic ones have a limited note range, and are optimized for specific keys... not to mention the range of the human voice!

[zerocrossing]

When you're talking about an electronic instrument that can be configured to do almost anything, you're right it doesn't matter a lot. Type of key and modes mean a lot more. What is your relationship to the "root"? That's the biggest deal when it comes to tonal theory.

However, when playing an instrument like a guitar, you may want to choose a root key of E or A. Why? It's what the lower strings are tuned to traditionally. Maybe you're like Keith Richards and tune to a G cord, then you'd play in G. The capability of your featured instrument becomes a big factor.

M

[jimmymus]

Ok so it seems like I'm basically on target then. Good stuff.

[Tony Ostinato]

quite often the singer will need to take the song either up or down depending on their range, if you show mercy to singers.

the audience still recognizes the song.

youll see a lot of famous singers as they got older started gradually taking their tunes lower and lower.

[Sascha Franck]

Well, key isn't irrelevant at all when you consider timbral differences as well as the ranges of instruments and which ranges sound best.

That's a *very* important point, especially when dealing with stringed instruments.
As an example: One of the reasons for most guitar luthiers to still stay away from 24 frets is that if you place the neck pickup at the (hypothetical) 24nd fret position, it'll catch up more overtones. Of course, this is only true for a handful of keys (E, A, G, D - and a few more), but after all, this is what a freaking truckload of guitar based music is building up on.
And transposing a guitar based composition in, say, E minor, to, say, Ab minor will make the entire thing sound more or less entirely different.
Being able to use open strings or some tones that have a strong sympathetic response to the built of the instrument makes a huge difference.

Then there's something more, such as the socalled "low interval limits". These (sorry for no links or so, I also can't find the papers from back when studying) describe how low you can go with a certain interval until it starts to sound like a big piece of muddy shit.
As an example: You may want to play a minor third C-Eb on your tonic chord in C minor. It might sound quite fine. Now, transpose the entire thing down a 4th (to G minor) and the interval G-Bb might not work anymore. This is just a random example without any scientific truth to it (hence no octave numbers), but it's really easy to check such things out.
As a result, should a part of a song not work a 4th below anymore, you gotta transpose it up a 5th instead. And that's gonna result in QUITE a drastic change in timbre and what not.

And then, there's also people with a more intense sense for tonalities. No, I'm not only talking about those with perfect pitch (for these people it's gotta be the worst, since they may have developed a very strong relationship between a tune and a certain key). I'm also talking about your typical guitar player being used to listen to a guitarbased tune in E, which, all of a sudden would be transposed to B. The sonic differences will be massive. And, for that guitar player in question, the sonic differences will be even larger (I'm talking out of personal experience here).

After all, personally, I am rather familiar with all keys and usually don't mind some transposing, but, especially on my instrument (the guitar that is), I do notice quite some differences between them.
And I'm sure it's like that for most more or less experienced players.

[gravehill]

The type of key, such as major, minor, jazz, whatever, determines the mood. The key itself, aka the root note, is only important when playing with OTHER people because of the problem of harmony. Each person, if playing by themselves, could play in whatever key they wanted, but together they need to be in the same key so they harmonize.

Right?

To a large extent you're right with that statement.

Apart from point others have made here, a couple of more reasons:

1) Different instruments have different ranges. For example a lot of metal is written in key of E minor, allowing the guitarists to keep chunking that low E. Of course many also down tune their instruments but the principle is the same.

2) Equal Temperament that we nowadays use is a relatively new phenomenon. Few centuries ago the distance of half step or whole step wasn't always the same and that meant that every key actually sounded different. People started going to Equal Temperament because it made it easier to play together with others. There was a thread in this forum about microtonality not very long ago.

[xoxos]

there are frequencies in our environment, down to (i believe it's 7.83hz created by the rotation of the earth - *edit* or it used to be..) transposing may have an effect.. a british newspaper recently published an article suggesting that b flat was "the key of happiness.." ymmv

in your initial statement, you're confusing the term "key" with "scale" at one point

what's the point? whatever you make of it -

in math, a complex number, for instance, is an abstraction - something that someone said "if we do this, what happens?" it's an arbitrary condition, not preexistent in "nature."

yet the supposition of complex numbers allows all sorts of developments.. fractals to z-plane filter analysis.

you can think of it as writing a story. you can make the first part up, and wonder "what's the point of this particularity?"

it begins a journey of (relative) creation. without that first line, you don't have much of a story.

[VicDiesel]

Then there's something more, such as the socalled "low interval limits". These (sorry for no links or so, I also can't find the papers from back when studying) describe how low you can go with a certain interval until it starts to sound like a big piece of muddy shit.

Helmholtz wrote about that. Every interval produces beats, and he found that a certain ranger of speed of beating is considered unpleasant. The lower in frequency you get, the wider your intervals need to be to prevent those beats. I'm sure that he then has examples from Palestrina and such that show that indeed you will never have (say) a minor third between the bass and tenor voices in their low rangers.

Didn't keep Beethoven from using some low and dense chords, but he was deaf. And not a very good composer.

Victor.

[wrench45us]

I'd say the frequecy and the timbre of the instruments can't be overlooked

I practice a lot of ii V patterns across (descending) the cycle of fifths and at some point I have to shift everything an octave or it just gets too muddy
when I started playing I was keeping it simple in C major, but when I started learning the inversions everything (on my piano at least) sounded a lot richer playing G C E rather than C E G, but if I went down a whole octave to that C E G it was too low. Inversions have their own quality, but if I can keep a few notes below middle C through key or inversion, most things sound richer to my ears

[gravehill]

Didn't keep Beethoven from using some low and dense chords, but he was deaf. And not a very good composer.

[Tony Ostinato]

he must have beethoven hooked up to some kind of turbine to generate energy when he spins.


you could check out some tune like "on broadway" that keeps transposing (modulating) up for each verse.


definately different instruments sound better in different keys and definately different keys are easier to play on different instruments.


trumpets for instance are built to work best in Bb, tho obviously they can play in all keys and a good player will overcome the problems involved in the worst keys.