How do you figure out what key a song is in?

This question comes from an e-mail:

The second question is more of a clarification on how you would recommend starting to recognize scale degrees, specifically the first note of a song. I see a few ways to approach this seemingly simple task:

- Presume that the first note starts on the first degree, since most songs start on the I chord.
I can then build a melody using scale degrees relative to this "do". I suspect this is not right and would possibly result in me unintentionally transposing the tune to some other key. This approach also doesn't get me to the same "answer", which you get to in many cases. For example, on page 14 of "Learn to Play by Ear", the first degree in your example for The First Noel is mi as opposed to do. So I ask myself, "How did he know it started on mi?"



The only real way to figure out the key is by analyzing every note in the song. This is because songs can seem to be in one key and then after a few chords it will seem to be in another. How do you decide which of the two keys is the correct key?

The only real way is through experience.

There are some general rules though.

1) If a song starts and ends in a particular key, then it's in that key.

2) If it spends most of the time in one key, but one section is in a different key, then it's in the first key.

Some songs move constantly. "All the Things You Are" starts and ends in one key, but moves through about seven key changes (I can't quite remember, but it's a lot).


How do you tell a song starts in a particular key? Because of the notes of the melody. If all of the notes of a melody are in a particular key, then you know it's in that key.

For example, there are two half-steps in every major key.

In the key of C, the half-steps are between B and C, and between E and F. If the melody starts with a half-step between the first two notes, you'll know almost immediately what key you are in, because you have a 50% change of being right. (There are exceptions, such as notes that go outside the key, but let's keep this simple)

I would say using half-steps is a great way to find out what key you are in. Also study songs that have half-steps prominently in the first few notes of the melody, such as "The Song is You".

The other way to easily tell what key you are common chord progressions. If a song starts with I vi, ii, V, you'll know within the first two measures what key you are in. Songs such as "The Way you look Tonight" use this common chord progression right at the beginning of the song, which makes it easy to tell what key you are in.

Some songs such as "Satin Doll" use the ii, V progression. So it doesn't start on the I chord, but after a few measures, it's obvious that this progression has to be ii, V. Study common chord progressions, memorize the chord changes to famous songs, and you'll start to be able to immediately figure out what key you are in.

It goes without saying that memorizing all 12 major keys is the first step.

OK, back to the question:




- Option 1: Look at some sheet music to see what note the song started on when the music is transposed to the key of C.


Yes, the key signature in sheet music is the right key 90% of the time. But watch out for relative minor. If the song is in the key of C, but the first chord is Am, it's probably in the relative minor of C, which is Am. Very rarely you'll also see modal songs, where the root chord doesn't match the relative major. The most common of these is the dorian mode -- but this is something kind of esoteric. I don't think you should worry about that. But do learn the relative minor for each key. It's basically the six chord, so if you know your chords in all 12 major keys, you'll know your relative minors as well.
Back to the question:


- Option 2: Listen to some music and aurally try to see if you can match the first note to one of the notes in the middle C scale.


When I play by ear, I just hit a piano key. If the melody note that I'm looking for is higher or lower, I move up or down respectively.

But as your musical knowledge grows, you make more sophisticated judgments. Was it up a minor third, or down a minor third (etc.) Once you can hear intervals, it's as easy as the alphabet. I'm sure you know your alphabet when you see it.

So usually the second note, or third note I play is the melody note. It didn't used to be that way.

They all of your musical knowledge comes into play. How is the melody behaving. There are so many cliches that can help you figure out where you are in the key.

You'll use:
key knowledge
common chord progression knowledge
relative pitch

The more you know about music, the more your musical GPS will "just know"

Back to the question:


- Option 3: Somehow you looked at the whole piece of music and saw that the song "settled" on some other note that was different than the first note and you worked backward to find the degree of the first note.


THAT'S IT! In a roundabout way. If I hear the first three notes of the song "summertime", I can tell you without going to the piano, that the song is in a minor key, and that the first two pitches are "mi" and "do". How do I know this? Did I figure it out just now? No. I just know, because I know the song so well. I may have learned it by ear, or I may have learned it from sheet music. But now, that will help me learn other songs that use those pitches, such as "Poor Wayfaring Stranger" (check out Eva Cassidy's version, very cool)

Back to the question:


- Option 4: Somehow you link the melody notes to the underlying chord progression, though that part isn't crystal clear yet since the melody note at the beginning of a phrase is often different than the chord at the beginning of the phrase.


This is definitely an important part of it, as mentioned above. Check out "list-of-chords.com". I cover the most basic chord progressions with examples. Also, just start to memorize as many tunes as possible. Each tune you memorize will make every similar tune easier to play by ear. Certain tunes, such as "Blue Moon" that use the I vi ii V progression will get you the most bang for your buck, so you may want to start there. But just start memorizing your favorite tunes, and it won't take long.

What really helped me was singing the melody on solfeggio.


Be sure to check out my list of piano chords website.

New Piano Sight Reading Game created in Flash CS4

I'm my quest to improve my skills with object oriented programming in actionscript 3.0 and Flash CS4 I have created yet another sight reading trainer for the piano.

Flash CS4 rocks my world. The motion editor with the custom motions have made my flash stuff look amazing.

The coolest new feature that this sight reading trainer has that my previous versions didn't have is that you can select from twelve different areas on the grand staff to focus on. You can mix and match them all, so there are hundreds of possibilities. If you need to work on just the notes above the staff in the bass clef, you can do that. If you want to work on just the lines of the treble clef, you can do that.

Here's the link: my new sight reading trainer.

"Joy to the World" Christmas song tutorial

Free Christmas Tutorial

"Joy to the World"

Posted Dec. 5, 2008

DOWNLOAD PDF

Well, I've been wanting to create a Christmas book and I think I'm finally getting around to it. A little late for this year, but not so late that I can't give you this free 10 page tutorial over "Joy to the World".

I'm thinking I'm going to call the new book "Christmas Songs Without Music". If you take a look at the tutorial, I think you'll see why.

Crazy Conspiracy Thought

What if someone (or some group) had been manipulating oil prices, but once they saw Obama win, they decided to lay low for a while, because they don't want the American people to completely abandon oil?

What if John McCain had won and the oil prices would have stayed high because John McCain's policy was to invest in offshore drilling (i.e. more oil flowing) rather than clean energy technologies?

Just a crazy thought.

It is weird how the price of oil dropped since summer. It takes the wind out of people's anger against oil.

I kind of wish oil prices had stayed high because it would have kept people interested in solar and wind power.

:(

Why you should give up drinking booze

So last night, feeling sorry for myself, I went to a bar by myself and drank two drinks.

Cost of each drink: $5, tip to cute bar-maid: $2.

$14 for two drinks.

I probably drink three times a week. Cost: $42 -- except most bars aren't as cheap as Daddy's (In Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, United States).

So let's say $50 for easy math.

That's $200 a month.

$2400 a year

$24,000 a decade

$120,000 over 50 years

If you figure in compound interest it's something like:
1.5 million!

http://www.moneychimp.com/calculator/compound_interest_calculator.htm

Now let's look at what I did on the way home.

I got the booze munchies, a common phenomenon for me.

So I spent another $15 on chips, salsa and a other goodies.

Now we're starting to talk some major money.

That's why I think I'm going to quit drinking.

Kanye West is an arrogant prick

I don't even know why this is news.

CNN reports that a rapper named Kanye West calls himself "the voice of our generation."

What a doofus. I don't listen to his music, except when my stupid ex-girlfriend put Madonna on in the car, and Kanye West was blabbering about how it's easy for him to get laid.

I'm sorry, but I'm part of Kanye's generation, and if that's all he has to say, he's not speaking for me.

Why, oh why does CNN put this as a news story.

Especially after Barack Obama becomes the role model of this generation.

Can the media stop giving idiots a public forum?

Who cares what Anna Nicole Smith, Paris Hilton or Kanye West think?

All 12 Major Scales -- created with PHP

All 12 major scales, created with PHP

include('chord_variables.php');
include('output_fns.php');
do_html_header('All 12 Major Scales');
$piano_chord_type = 'major';
$current_root_name = "C";

$scale_degree_name[1] = "root";
$scale_degree_name[2] = "second";
$scale_degree_name[3] = "third";
$scale_degree_name[4] = "fourth";
$scale_degree_name[5] = "fifth";
$scale_degree_name[6] = "sixth";
$scale_degree_name[7] = "seventh";
$scale_degree_name[8] = "octave";

$adjustment["major"] = array(0,2,4,5,7,9,11,12); 
$adjustment["minor"] = array(0,2,3,5,7,8,10,12);
$adjustment["minor 7th"] = array(0,2,3,5,7,8,10,12);
$adjustment["major 7th"] = array(0,2,4,5,7,9,11,12);
$adjustment["dominant 7th"] = array(0,2,4,5,7,9,10,12);
$adjustment["diminished 7th"] = array(0,2,3,5,6,8,11,12);

$scale_name["major"] = 'major';
$scale_name["minor"] = 'minor';
$scale_name["minor 7th"] = 'minor';
$scale_name["major 7th"] = 'major';
$scale_name["dominant 7th"] = 'mixolydian';
$scale_name["diminished 7th"] = '';


$temparray = $adjustment[$piano_chord_type];


if ($piano_chord_type != "diminished 7th"){

echo '
';

for ($scale=1; $scale<13; $scale++){
  $current_root_number = $scale + 11;
  $current_root_name = $Roots[$scale];
  init_default_names();
  changeKeyNames($Roots[$scale]);



// MAKE ROW OF 8 COLUMNS


// MAKE ROW OF 8 COLUMNS

for ($i=1; $i<9; $i++){


include('show_scale_v2.php');



}

// END ROW OF 8 COLUMNS

echo "
";


} // end if



} // end if
echo '
';
?>

Sight Reading help -- a new angle

Here's a new flash trainer I created that focuses on recognizing interval shapes when you sight-read.

Interval Shapes Trainer

Very handy.

Chord Progessions added to my list of chords site

Hi,

I've been having a lot of fun with php and flash. My latest creation is the website List-of-Chords.com.

I just added a section that shows chord progressions for each chord. It's pretty exciting what you can do with php!

Goog stock plummets

Wouldn't you know it. I'm out of work right now. (I start a new part-time gig next week, bringing in the exorbitant sum of $300 a week) And I thought maybe I would:

sell all my Goog stock and pay my rent

But then, I can't in good conscience sell Goog stock when Goog has dropped like 80% over the last year.

What is this, the great depression?

I know I'm feeling depressed.

Plus, my book sales are down, because everybody's spending twice the amount on gas and energy.

So in the meantime, I've been teaching myself Flash actionscript 3.0, and working on my music websites.

Check out my latest version of my List of piano chords website.

Also, I created a new tutorial that teaches half-steps and whole steps that I'm very proud of.

If you need some flash work, send it my way. :(

OK, enough pathetic-ation.

Tina Fey does Sarah Palin on SNL (Saturday Night Live)

Here's Tina Fey's hilarious parody of Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live last night, October 4th, 2008

The new bond song!

So this is the new bond theme "Another Way to Die". I think it's definitely better than the last couple of forgettable themes. It's got the eyebrow raising pairing of Alicia Keys and Jack White of the White Stripes.

I like that it sounds a little improvised and it surprises you. It's not just verse chorus verse chord bride chorus. It's got a cool section where Jack's guitar and Alicia's voice trade riffs -- very cool.

I fart in your general direction

In this undated photo released by the South Central Regional Jail, Jose A. Cruz is shown. Cruz, 34, who police said passed gas and fanned it toward a patrolman has been charged with battery on a police officer. Cruz, of Clarksburg, W.Va., was pulled over early Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2008, for driving without headlights, police said.

What the $[insert_expletive]

"I have great, great confidence in our capital markets and in our financial institutions. Our financial institutions, banks and investment banks, are strong. Our capital markets are resilient. They're efficient. They're flexible."

-- Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, March 16, 2008

"Our policy in this administration -- laws shouldn't bail out lenders, laws shouldn't help speculators."

-- President Bush, May 19, 2008

"Our economy has continued growing, consumers are spending, business are investing, exports continue increasing and American productivity remains strong. We can have confidence in the long-term foundation of our economy...I think the system basically is sound. I truly do."

-- President Bush, July 15, 2008

Gently Murdered?

So, the headlines over at Sports Illustrated say that a soccer player was brutally murdered.

I know this is awful to say, but aren't most murders brutal? I wonder what percentage of murders are not brutal.

I guess the people at Sports Illustrated consider most murders to be non-brutal. If I shoot you in the head, so that you die quickly, is that a non-brutal murder?

Do we need a public education program to encourage more gentle murdering?

I just find the term "brutal murder" to be a silly and inaccurate term.

He tried to get away, so they shot him three times. That's the facts. Now, if they had shot him once in the head, would that earn a different headline?

DC Heist - Wall Street Gang Hijacks Washington

Sep-22-2008 20:38

Gerald Celente Special to Salem-News.com
On the evening of September 18th 2008, the American democratic system was replaced by a financial dictatorship.

(RHINEBECK, NY) - What was billed as a "Federal Bailout" was nothing less than a bloodless coup. The Wall Street Gang had taken over the White House and control of Washington. Congress promised not to resist, and pledged to pass legislation as demanded.

Warning that America's financial system was perilously close to collapse unless immediate action was taken, economic martial law was declared.

The American people were told that from this day forward, they would be responsible for paying off the bad debt from any failing private financial enterprise deemed "too big to fail."

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, spearheading the coup, sought unrestricted authority to spend the nation's money as he saw fit. The first order of business by the Economic Czar was to take trillions of dollars of bad debt from crumbling investment banks and insurance companies and transfer it to the backs of already debt-burdened citizens.

"We're talking hundreds of billions," said Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, one of the "too-big-to-fails." Within days of the takeover, the number jumped into the trillions. This will put a "significant amount of taxpayers' money on the line," he said.

Quick & Clean

In simple language, with cameras rolling, in broad daylight, the American public was robbed blind. This wasn't a magic show. There were no hidden tricks or sleights of hand. "We want this to be clean, we want this to be quick," demanded the Economic Czar. "We need to get this done quickly, and the cleaner the better," intoned President Bush, with the urgency of his "smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud" logic he used as a pretext to invade Iraq.

"The risk of not acting would be far higher," Bush said, promising to "work with Congress to get a bill done quickly."

Having accurately forecast the current financial debacle, we confidently now forecast that taking swift action will prove - as it did in Iraq - far more catastrophic than allowing Wall Street to suffer the consequences of its greed and mismanagement.

Presidential candidate Barack Obama promised to "fully support" the plan and called on Congress to take "immediate action.." Republican challenger John McCain said he would further review the proposal before passing judgment while Congressional leaders from both parties have signed on with their support.

Americans were told they would have to pay to rescue the very companies whose unregulated greed, fraud and recklessness had created the crisis in the first place. Considered nobodies by the authorities, the people had no voice and had no choice.

"I know of nobody who is arguing over the amount of money or even about that the secretary ought to have the authority to purchase these toxic instruments, these bad debts,'' bowed Senator Christopher Dodd, the Democratic chairman of the Banking Committee.

Author's Note: If you are a "nobody" who cares about "the amount of money," and does not believe "the secretary ought to have the authority to purchase these toxic instruments," take action NOW. While signing petitions or calling the White House or Washington representatives often proves fruitless, in this emergency we suggest you call, write, pester, hound, and protest.

Call your newspaper, radio and TV stations. Talk to reporters covering the "DC Heist." Tell them what you think and what you want. Write editorials. Use the Internet as a call to action. Use your imagination, wits and common sense to have your voice heard and make your will known. Until Congress votes on the plan, it is not yet a fait accompli. Tell them if they vote "yes," you'll vote "no."

Trendpost: While the transfer of "toxic instruments" from private firms to the national debt will enrich those companies that once had owned them, the measures taken will do nothing to keep the sinking US economy from going under.

The biggest casualty, besides indentured American servants held responsible for paying off the debt, is the US dollar. The greenback's getting slaughtered on the foreign exchanges and gold prices, the safe-haven commodity, are once again soaring. As we previously forecast, we are still predicting "Gold $2000."

Gerald Celente is the Founder/Director of The Trends Research Institute; Publisher, The Trends Journal. To contact the author, E-mail: gcelente@trendsresearch.com

Bailout Sucks!

Why do we privatize profits and socialize the resulting debt?

$700 billion to buy bad debt?

Doesn't sound like a good deal, and the principle is so wrong. The FBI is investigating 26 financial firms for fraud. Why don't we just have their CEOs and other managers pay back their compensation packages over the last three years? Just the big five investment banks paid themselves $39 billion in bonuses last year. Doesn't that just make your blood boil? These bastards always pay themselves huge multi-million dollar bonuses and then complain about the economy when they the firms go under. Sounds to me like the experiment where they put a mother and baby monkey on an increasingly hot surface, and eventually the mother monkey would stand on top of the baby monkey. These guys are like the robber barons of yore. If you're "expertise" has led us to this, why are you giving yourself 15 million in annual compensation, or $50 million. I think what we need instead of a bailout is a witch hunt. I want another Enron payback where the management are indicted, humiliated and held accountable.



Or give that money to the average person. I want a bailout for myself. If you divide $700 billion by the 300 million people in the US, you get $2300 per person. If you exclude all the millionaires, that goes up a little more. Let's give this money to the people. Don't grease the economy, because the fat cats who control the economy are skimming it with impunity. Give the money to the people. Or better yet, just stop spending money we don't have!

Woman who lost 160 pounds talks about "juice feasting"

Wall Street Robber Barrons

$39 billion: The Wall Street bonuses for the big five investment banks last year.

ABC News reports:

In 2007, Wall Street’s five biggest firms — Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley — paid a record $39 billion in bonuses to themselves.

That’s $10 billion more than the $29 billion loan taxpayers are making to J.P. Morgan to save Bear Stearns.

Those 2007 bonuses were paid even though the shareholders in those firms last year collectively lost about $74 billion in stock declines — their worst year since 2002.

These company executives are still fiercely fighting to protect their pay. Politico notes that the Bush Treasury Department is “resisting efforts” by House Democrats “to impose pay limits on Wall Street executives and bankers.”


I think the real answer, is they can pay themselves whatever they want, but people should take all their money out of these companies and never invest in them again. We keep rewarding their selfishness.

That's why the rich keep getting richer and the rest of us suffer.

Can you figure out who this celebrity is?

How to type MARILYN MONROE with Word by Martin Missfeldt

Bass Clef Study Quiz

I've been developing a bass clef sight reading tool in flash. If you want to learn bass clef, this tool is great. It doesn't just tell you you're wrong, but teaches how to fix your thinking about finding the notes.

musical road

Honda is doing a promotion where they created grooves on a road to play "The William Tell Overture":



Pretty funny.

But it would sound better if it were on CD.

List of piano chords written in PHP

So I've been teaching myself the programming language PHP -- the result of which is a new website http://www.list-of-chords.com/. This is very exciting since I was able to take the logic in my flash chord finders and expand it to the site.

For those of you who know PHP, I used PHP's output buffer to create static html files, so that the site is more search engine friendly.

function MakeARowofFour($startNum, $endNum) {
global $Roots;
global $NiceNameArray;
global $ShortNameArray;
global $URLNameArray;
global $default_names;
print "<tr>";
for ($table=$startNum; $table<=$endNum; $table++)
{
print "<td>\n";
print"<h2><b>" . $Roots[$table] . " Chords</h2>\n";

//Produce 12 lines for each table
for($counter=0; $counter<6; $counter++)
{

print "&lt;h3><a href=\"$Roots[$table]-$URLNameArray[$counter].htm\">$Roots[$table] $NiceNameArray[$counter] <b>({$Roots[$table]}$ShortNameArray[$counter])</b></a></h3>\n";


ob_start(); //start the PHP output buffer

//Do some PHP stuff to make a page then
$type_short_name = $ShortNameArray[$counter];
$current_root_name = $Roots[$table];
//
//

$piano_chord_type = $NiceNameArray[$counter];
include 'page_generator.php';

//write buffer to file


$myFile = "$Roots[$table]-$URLNameArray[$counter].htm";
$fh = fopen($myFile, 'w') or die("can't open file");


$data = ob_get_contents(); //puts the content of the output buffer into the $data variable


fwrite($fh, $data);


//$stringData = "Tracy Tanner\n";
//fwrite($fh, $stringData);
fclose($fh);
ob_end_clean();

}

print "</td>";
}
print "</tr>";




}
MakeARowofFour(1, 4);
MakeARowofFour(5, 8);
MakeARowofFour(9, 12);
?>

Given What's happening with the economy these days, the Treasury Department has issued a new dollar bill.........

This is insane -- starvation diet!

It's amazing what some people will do to themselves. I've been doing two days of juice cleansing a week, so I was surfing the net looking at pictures and stories of people who've done fasting. I found this woman who put her health at risk by doing a water-only fast for three weeks! In the last video she can barely form a sentence without effort. It's fascinating and scary.

Here's here first day of fasting:



Here's day 21:


Here's day 30: She seems very happy to be able to eat again!


My own experience with juice fasting has been great. So far I have done a juice fast (approx. 300-500 calories per day) two days a week, for five weeks now. I've dropped about 10 pounds, and I look and feel great. But this is a very moderate regime, that allows five days of rest and preparation between. This woman has done something risky. Did she really go 30 days without any food, only water? What about the occasional vitamin?

This can't be good for you. Can it?

Here's another unhappy person who has been starving herself. Check out this woman's story:


For some reason, the men on youtube don't seem as willing to suffer. Check out this guy's amazing story:


Wow, this guy lost 400 pounds, very heart-breaking, heart-warming:

How to Play from a Fake Book

Here's a new article I wrote on "How to Play from a Fake Book".

120 random piano chords

A random video created with flash 8. It displays one of 72 piano chords randomly, in groups of five chords that share a common root.

New dynamic lists of piano chords

I've been practicing PHP, and I created two lists of piano chords. It's kind of like the flash chord finders that I've created, except spread out over 500 hundred pages. It's actually only four pages (two for each list), but depending on the variables, it creates over 500 pages with a unique diagram for each page!!!


Go to the list of basic chords


Go to the list of more advanced chords

Piano Chords -- cool tool created in Flash 8

So I stayed up last night creating this cool flash tool to help you learn the piano chords in my book "How to Speed Read Piano Chord Symbols". You can play around with the free piano chord finder here:
http://www.pianochordfinder.org/html/...

PLEASE NOTE: As of yet, there is no sound. It's going to take a while to add the sound. I need to record 36 separate audio files and then write the code.

You can download a free sample chapter of "How to Speed Read Piano Chord Symbols" here: http://www.patternpiano.com/sample_ch...

Here's a quick flash intro to the method I teach in "How to Speed Read Piano Chord Symbols":
http://www.pianochordfinder.org/html/...

For more info, check out my website http://www.Patternpiano.com

Pickens Plan

I think this is important, so I'm putting it up here, even though it's not piano chords related. This is a guy in texas who is working to create wind power for the US. Very cool. Check it out, sign up. I think this would be a great thing for the US.


Find more videos like this on PickensPlan

48 great minor piano chords

This exercise comes from my book "How to Play from a Fakebook without Gettin' the Blues" Visit http://www.patternpiano.com/
for more info

48 Great Piano Chords

Major chords, Major 7th Chords, Dominant Chords. This new version is slower, so that it's easier to follow along.

Here's the original, faster version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFuOsn...

If you would like to find out more about my e-books on piano chords, check out http://www.patternpiano.com

I also have some cool free flash tools at my other website http://www.pianochordfinder.org

Musical Rhythm -- Learn to Understand Rhythms you Hear