how well are scale/harmony infos on streaming services?

[Caine123]

hey guys

STUPID question
im seeing e.g. on BEATPORT the harmonies of each song like here:



so let's say i like the 2nd song which is stated as "B Minor", theoretically the song should be in B Minor, so setting my scale/playing the notes of the scale i should be able to have the same tone and notes do i?

[shawshawraw]

Yes, assuming the annotation is correct, the song should "mostly" be in B minor.

Occasionally a bar or a section may not match. Your ears will feel it by comparison.

Try all the three minor scales (natural, harmonic, and real melodic minor scales) as well as the Dorian scale and see which one fits better. Your choice might vary from bar to bar.

[Caine123]

thx a lot! this would help a lot determing the scale. maybe someone knows a good page where releases are also shown in which scales they are?

[DJ Warmonger]

It seems that Beaport automatically guesses the scale on its own. My tracks sometimes do match, sometimes not. Even though I provide this info to a label ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[shawshawraw]

thx a lot! this would help a lot determing the scale. maybe someone knows a good page where releases are also shown in which scales they are?

If it's an automatic guess as Warmonger said, you can't 100% trust this annotation then.

But you can try a programmatic approach to find it yourself. Pay attention to any semitones you hear in melodies (lead melody, counter-melodies, or bass melody if you can). If a song is in major, a pair of in-scale semitones would either be the scale degrees of 3-4 or 7-1 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 as the scale degrees of major; 1 is the "tonic" of the key, for example when talking about D Major, 1 means the D note). Once you spot a pair of semitones that sound like within the scale, there are only two options to go.

Minor songs are trickier because of all the 'minor'-related scales as listed above (effectively offering possibilities of scale degrees of 1, 2, b3, 4, 5, b6 or 6, b7 or 7). But you can notice that 2-b3 stays constant across all. And 7-1 is a very common one whenever the scale employs the 7. And 5-b6 or 6-b7 is the other possibility.

It can take some time but it's guaranteed to work and a good theory workout

[jancivil]

we're expected to know whether to trust one Ben Boehmer on Beatport for you too, eh

[envlpx]

From my experience, sometimes the key annotation is wrong. I've never found a song with a wrong BPM, though.