Talk:Key (music)

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This article is part of the WikiProject Tunings, Temperaments, and Scales to improve Wikipedia's articles related to musical tunings, temperaments, and scales.

Contents 1 Questions dating to 2002 2 Gravity 3 Opening sentence 4 Technical nature of the article

[edit] Questions dating to 2002

should also explain what it means to say an instrument (eg Cornet) plays in the key of something. (never understood it myself) -- Tarquin

Yes, I think it should probably refer to transposing instrument, and the matter can be dealt with in detail there (transposing instrument needs some work - one of those things I've been meaning to do for a while...) --Camembert

Cool, thanks Cam. I get it now. :-) (though it sounds odd... if I play an electronic keyboard that's been transposed, I find it very off-putting.) -- Tarquin

Ah, that sounds like the curse of perfect pitch ;-) --Camembert

Ah (again) but does it worry you if you don't KNOW it's been done? :) I have the worst sense of pitch of anyone I know but if I am reading off music in the wrong key when singing I hate it - I don't think it's anything subtle, just that I know it's wrong and don't like it!! Nevilley

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Now, to business. This sentence:

When a piece of music changes keys it is said to have modulated.

Is that true? I always thought that modulation meant a process had taken place - other than just the key change - some idea of preparation, even if it's just a dominant seventh in the new key. But if it's just a crash key change (I suppose the typical pop song Cheesy Key Change (TM) would be an example, but there are plenty elsewhere) with no preparation, is that still a modulation??

Just a thought. Nevilley

Good point, that. I went to xrefer.com and it came back with the Penguin Dictionary of Music: "a change being accomplished by 'continuous' musical means (i.e. not simply by starting afresh in another key)"; and the Oxford Dictionary of Music: "by evolutionary mus. means (not just by stopping and starting anew in another key". So it seems you're right - modulation has to be something more than bumping a piece up a tone to be worthy of the name. I guess we need a lot more stuff on modulation and changing key in general. I'll try to knock up a quick fix to be going on with. --Camembert

How definite is modulation and key -- to what extent is it a matter of individual interpretation? Take the Wedding March, for instance. Does it modulate in the space of some 4 bars, or are the Am and B chords just in passing? (PS I meant the Mendelssohn, the one everyone plays badly on clunky pianos when it's not chopsticks) -- Tarquin

Ugh, Wagner (unless you mean Mendelssohn, but he's even worse)... Well, I think the word "modulation" implies structural significance as well as key change, so this isn't really modulation, whatever else it might be. Whether it's really changed key is perhaps a more subjective thing, yes, although I doubt any musical analysts nowadays would say it had - they would prefer to say that the harmonies were extended or that it was passing or whatever. I mean, if you stop after those four bars and try to play a perfect cadence in your "new key", you can't do it and make it sound convincing. On the other hand, the perfect cadence at the end of the exposition of sonata form movements, where you're normally in the dominant, is completely convincing, indicating that you're pretty clearly in that new key (although there's a lingering feeling that you're not finished yet, because you're not in the same key you started in). I think that test (trying to play a convincing perfect cadence in your "new key") is a pretty good one, though I daresay others would disagree (and of course, what's "convincing" is pretty subjective in itself).

But sure, key perception is quite a subjective thing - I have no doubt that Alban Berg's Violin Concerto ends very clearly in a certain key (B flat major? I forget), although others would probably not hear it that way. Likewise, I can hear certain phrases of Anton Webern's Variations for piano being in a certain key (the more I hear it, the more I think this), but I'm sure most people hear the whole thing as a big atonal mess. How to stick all this in the article, I'm not sure, however... --Camembert

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I think in the Oxford Companion there's a list of the colours & moods generally associated with each key. Would something along those lines be good here? Also, I read in Jozsef Gat's Technique of Piano Playing that the reason Romantic composers preferred the black-note keys is that on the piano, the difference in finger angle produces a mellower sound on black notes. (great book BTW, but euw! at all the diagrams of muscles and bones...) -- Tarquin

Never heard that about the black notes before - interesting. As for the colours - that might be interesting to have here, but I seem to remember that various composers came up with different colours for each key. Rimsky-Korsakov did a list, I think, and so did Scriabin, and someone else I can't remember, but I don't think they agree on very much. It'd still make interesting reading though.

Relationship between moods and keys are also interesting - F major is pastoral, D major festive, C# minor tragic, that sort of thing. I daresay there's some disagreement here as well, but probably less, because characterisations tend to be based more on pieces actually written in a certain key in the past than on pretty subjective criterea - C# minor is largely thought of in the way it is because of the Moonlight Sonata, for instance. So sure, stick 'em in if you've got a list. --Camembert

[edit] Gravity

Removed the following:

An analogy that would be easy for a non-musician to encompass is that a musical key is like the force of gravity: what goes up, must come down. The entire history of music can be summed up as composers learning to "jump" higher and higher. In keeping with this analogy, Bach and Mozart were playing hop-scotch, Beethoven invented the hot-air balloon, Berlioz was the first to pilot an airplane, Wagner was the first astronaut, Scriabin went to the moon and back, and Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Miles Davis blasted off and haven't been seen since.

Entertaining, but not particularly edifying. —Wahoofive | Talk 19:21, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Opening sentence

I think the first sentence needs a lot of attention. Based on what I take it as meaning, a song in the key of C major can be based on either the C major scale or the C Mixolydian mode, as opposed to just the C major scale, because both scales have the notes C-E-G. Any rewording?? Georgia guy 19:44, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

There is some disagreement among music theorists on this point, especially with regard to the minor mode. There is a significant body of music by composers such as Vaughan Williams which uses such modal influences, but is considered major or minor. For example, RVW's Mass in G minor is in the Dorian mode throughout. A fair amount of pop and rock music in C major might well have the characteristic B-flat of mixolydian (to say nothing of blues, where the flat seventh is pretty much de rigueur). But our article also says:

A key may be major or minor; music in the Dorian, Phrygian, and so on are usually considered to be in a mode rather than a key

and that would include the mixolydian. I'd hate to have the opening paragraph get too hung up on such theoretical details, however; our target audience is non-musicians. If you can improve the article, however, go for it. —Wahoofive (talk) 18:14, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Technical nature of the article

I know absolutely nothing about music theory. My brother and my wife are into music, though, so I wanted to see if I could finally understand just what key was. So when I read the opening sentence of this article... "In music theory, the key identifies the tonic triad, the chord, major or minor, which represents the final point of rest for a piece, or the focal point of a section." ...you can imagine I am no closer to understanding what exactly "key" is. Still. Is there any way to explain key to people like me who know nothing about music theory? I mean, barely understand more than what sharps and flats are, and that only because of their keys on a piano/keyboard. :) RobertM525 00:11, 11 December 2006 (UTC)