Is F Major the most hateful chord? (AKA what chords do you least like to use...)

[ravasb]

The fully barred F major on the guitar is pretty smarmy, but the 4 string one is pretty humble and plays nicely with others.

[Numanoid]

Hi

I appreciate that this isn't a very rational viewpoint (and no, I haven't been on the booze yet tonight), but there's something about F Major that I despise.

Just add an E at the end, makes all the difference:

F A C + E

[BERFAB]

I combine F Maj with D min and get some really sad hatred out of my songs

"D minor is really the saddest of all keys..." -Nigel Tufnel

[ariston]

F Major - triumphant, manly, ballsy.

If it's too strong, it means you're too weak.

[Sendy]

F major in what tuning exactly? Equal temperament?

[Heathcliff]

F major rocks, but only if A=432Hz.

[Sendy]

F major rocks, but only if A=432Hz.

Integer frequencies are grating. A=441.91913040534995382394... is much better.

[DJ Warmonger]

F major seems to be popular in hard trance - when you want to blow the walls into pieces and cause heart attack on audience.
D minor, however, is my favourite key - as someone mentioned, the saddest one. For me it's magical and atmospheric, perfect for progressive / anthem trance, as well as epic (gothic? evil?) climax.
For uplifters, E major all the way. It's just warm and beautiful and I can't help it.

[Sendy]

It makes no sense to speak of the feeling of a chord without specifying the tuning/intonation you're using. In equal temperament all major chords are the same object, transposed up and down.

This is essentially why I insist as many synths as possible should have at least rudimentary scale modification options (either from a scala file or by being able to tune each note in the octave). Try playing ii-V-I in a bunch of different tunings and you'll see what I mean.

[jancivil]

well, I don't know. but I wonder how many of the people with a strong feeling for a chord will consistently identify it in blind tests. Give them a Gb major, see if they don't call it F major given suggestion.

the 'what key is this' thread, I for some reason knew C was C there, and I can identify things by certain properties, open strings relationships on guitar fairly reliably; but that is preserved by a capo which I might be tricked by. I don't have perfect pitch, but...
I think the transposition itself gives a different 'color' but I'm not going to get into science, it isn't my field. For instance I use lower than A=440 for effect and there is a different property - TONE - that belongs to that (eg., guitar feedback/acoustical phenomena). Tuning strings on a guitar to a [lower] pitch, there is a physical difference in vibration. Additionally there is no way to ensure 100% the actual relationships as a tuner! "all things being equal", but they're not. Tensors vary owing to construction.

A person's voice is going to be different in different keys/ranges. Cf., Formants. Why do we mitigate the chipmunk effect? Why do we need all of these samples to make a piano library a viable product, if it's a matter of a simple object and transposition? etc. Electronic instruments, not so much, I guess.

That said I think most of the claims in this thread are imagination, tripping.

[robogone]

That said I think most of the claims in this thread are imagination, tripping.

Mostly sourced from this:

[jancivil]

[cryophonik]

Which chords do you seldom use?

I stopped hanging around minor chords after I turned 21.

[Sendy]

A person's voice is going to be different in different keys/ranges. Cf., Formants. Why do we mitigate the chipmunk effect? Why do we need all of these samples to make a piano library a viable product, if it's a matter of a simple object and transposition? etc. Electronic instruments, not so much, I guess.

But formants are way beyond the scope of this discussion. Obviously accoustic instruments and synth patches with filters and other processes that don't keytrack 100% have complex formants and specifying that the abstract notion of a chord in ET is the same in all keys isn't a statement that everything sounds the same when transposed. >_>

The thing with formants is that they're circumstancial and don't really pertain to the abstract notion of a chord. You can't generalize about formants because without knowing what instrument we're even talking about, which is the typical context of these "chord colour" discussions, they're a mystery factor.

If someone were to say "in the upright piano in my front room, a theme I wrote in C major sounded much sweeter when transposed to E major" that would be plausible, but that kind of specificity hasn't entered the equation when people speak of chord colours in general in western music (especially in a synth-based forum where formants have to be arbitrarily set up).

[Hink]

I had this problem with the F Maj when I was 14, but then I learned to use a bar chord although I still didn't like the tone of the bar chord as much as an open F Maj...I stayed that way into my 30s like a lot of guitar players I know...but then I figured out the solution...this is one bar of a very old song of mine which starts out with an open F Maj (played on a super cheap Dean acoustic)...it's called scordatura (not the song, the technique) and it's been a way of life for me for at least 20 years now...surely one of the single most things that really advanced my style of playing and my options for writing

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/45487351/NEW1.mp3

btw here is a cool site about "affective key characteristics"...I dont care if people laugh at me, I dont really care if anyone agrees with this as it doesn't matter. While I dont finish a lot of songs I do play and record an awful lot and one thing that I like as an exercise is to attempt to achieve those characteristics pertaining to whatever particular key I choose to attempt...as far as I am concerned such exercises have also been a major factor in helping me grow as a guitar player...that's all that matters to me...oh and FWIW, I watched Spinal Tap exactly once in my life...and really did not care for it at all

http://www.wmich.edu/mus-theo/courses/keys.html