# So what is your favourite key?



## Flaneurette (May 14, 2017)

The inevitable thread... 

I like C# m/M, without any good reason besides that I like how it sounds and flows. Somewhat ethereal.

What is your favorite key?


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## tack (May 14, 2017)

Unless you have absolute pitch, do you _really_ hear any difference between C# and say D? Or is it more about the _feel _when you play in a certain key -- familiar, comfortable shapes and patterns, etc -- as opposed to how it actually _sounds?_


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## jonnybutter (May 14, 2017)

tack said:


> do you _really_ hear any difference between C# and say D?



Yes, they sound different (and of course they are absolutely different physically, because of their ranges). D major sounds brighter. I don't have perfect pitch, but I can usually guess what the key is, just from memory.

I don't have a favorite key, but maybe different keys are suitable for different kinds of material?


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## Gerhard Westphalen (May 14, 2017)

tack said:


> Unless you have absolute pitch, do you _really_ hear any difference between C# and say D? Or is it more about the _feel _when you play in a certain key -- familiar, comfortable shapes and patterns, etc -- as opposed to how it actually _sounds?_



I also think they do sound different and I don't have perfect pitch. I do, however, tend to have a pretty good pitch memory (as in I can sing, say, the starting pitch of a piece I haven't heard in months). I tend to mentally hear things at their correct pitches. Perhaps that's it but I do think there's more to it than just remembering different keys. I think they have different psychoacoustic effects.

I'm also a fan of C# but usually think about it as Db.

When it comes to favorite scale I really like the aeolian dominant.


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## tack (May 14, 2017)

My initial skepticism comes from two sources:

I have a bias as the only instrument I play is piano which doesn't have an obviously comfortable range (at least not when the difference is a few semitones)
This kind of thing is fertile ground for confirmation bias and blinded tests aren't something people typically bother themselves with.
Thinking about instruments with unambiguously comfortable ranges, I can understand that a tonal difference would come through in different keys. That said, I still feel like quite a lot of the time the perceived difference of a single half step would vanish under blinded conditions.

If anyone's aware of testing for this under experimental conditions I'd actually be really interested.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (May 14, 2017)

tack said:


> My initial skepticism comes from two sources:
> 
> I have a bias as the only instrument I play is piano which doesn't have an obviously comfortable range (at least not when the difference is a few semitones)
> This kind of thing is fertile ground for confirmation bias and blinded tests aren't something people typically bother themselves with.
> ...



One important thing to keep in mind that's separate from the psychoacoustic factors is that instruments play differently in different keys. Nothing to do with comfortable ranges. A string section playing in D will be sonically very different from playing in Db. Here a semitone will make much more of a difference than certain larger steps. Not an issue with electronic music. If you were to want to do a blind test you'd have to either use something that's fairly tonally neutral like a piano or digitally change the pitch of an orchestral recording so that the timbral qualities of keys stays the same for different pitch levels.


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## tack (May 14, 2017)

Gerhard Westphalen said:


> instruments play differently in different keys


Which is the tonal difference I referred to. (Timbral difference would have been a better choice of word. Or maybe the more vague "textural.") Ok, I can buy that kind of argument.


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## Rodney Money (May 14, 2017)

Flaneurette said:


> The inevitable thread...
> 
> I like C# m/M, without any good reason besides that I like how it sounds and flows. Somewhat ethereal.
> 
> What is your favorite key?


Sounds like to me you are a fan of Moonlight Sonata.


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## AllanH (May 14, 2017)

I tend to start in C for probably historical reasons. Depending on what instrument carries the melody, I transpose to adjust. I find that strings sound best in G or D, but I have no real data to back that. Brass is beautiful in D but few players can stick a high D consistently (or it sounds forced), so I'll lower a few notes to accommodate.

EDIT: I realize I was imprecise. By "brass" I was thinking of a Bb trumpet. I like to write so that the lead instrument can end on the root.


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## Rodney Money (May 14, 2017)

Eb minor pentatonic is a magical key for all instruments imho. It's mostly black keys on the piano so it feels great to them, in the voice there is a natural break between Eb and E so Eb is more comfortable to sing, in winds and brass this is the bread and butter range sounding beautifully, plus strings can sound expressive also. This key also sounds not only warm but a little exotic with hints of both Celtic and Asian flavor:


For brass and winds I love writing in the most majestic of keys: Bb and for mellow, beautiful brass melodic lines I love the key of F which not only places horns in open C but contains all the warm sonarities of beautiful intervals in the trumpets, trombones, and tuba:

For ethnic winds and piccolo trumpet I love keys that center around D: (Note: majestic part is in Bb


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## chillbot (May 14, 2017)

Some more practical reasons for keys as they relate to orchestration:

http://vi-control.net/community/thr...ich-key-to-compose-in-to-fit-the-scene.43615/


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## Flaneurette (May 14, 2017)

tack said:


> Unless you have absolute pitch, do you _really_ hear any difference between C# and say D? Or is it more about the _feel _when you play in a certain key -- familiar, comfortable shapes and patterns, etc -- as opposed to how it actually _sounds?_



Both.

Hearing it on it's own, I might not get it right. I reference C and try to hear if it's sharp. But in context, absolutely.

Often find myself playing certain shapes in C# naturally. It's just a preference, don't know where I picked it up.


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## Flaneurette (May 14, 2017)

Rodney Money said:


> Eb minor pentatonic is a magical key for all instruments imho. It's mostly black keys on the piano so it feels great to them, in the voice there is a natural break between Eb and E so Eb is more comfortable to sing, in winds and brass this is the bread and butter range sounding beautifully, plus strings can sound expressive also. This key also sounds not only warm but a little exotic with hints of both Celtic and Asian flavor.



That's great Rodney.

I always tune my guitar to Eb, it just sounds slightly _better_ or less tense than E.


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## Flaneurette (May 14, 2017)

Rodney Money said:


> Sounds like to me you are a fan of Moonlight Sonata.



Never played it. 

I mostly listened to Chopin my entire childhood, might have picked it up from him from playing certain pieces.


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## tack (May 14, 2017)

Flaneurette said:


> Never played it.


Oh you should. I mean, if you like flowing and ethereal in C# minor that is. 



Flaneurette said:


> I mostly listened to Chopin my entire childhood, might have picked it up from him from playing certain pieces.


My second favorite Chopin nocturne. I wish I could play it better than I do. :(


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## Flaneurette (May 14, 2017)

Interesting study: http://jes2s.com/September2014/musical-keys.html

A great deal has been written about the affinity between composers and musical keys. For instance, it is well-known that Mozart composed the majority of his works in the key of C major, and that some of Beethoven's most popular works are in the key of C minor. But little is written about composers’ least used keys, or more generally about their usage of all keys.

Most popular key seems to be D, followed by C, G, F, and Bb.

By the way, didn't know J.S. Bach wrote so much in G. Bach... The real G. 

My personal list in order of appreciation: C#/Db, C#m, Cm & Bm.


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## muk (May 15, 2017)

Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart wrote a book about the characterstics of musical keys. Beethoven made some notes that show at least a passing interest in the matter. In one of his sketchbooks he scribbled: 'b minor dark musical key ["h moll schwarze tonart"]. And there is something to be said for that some of his larger works that share the same key often share other characteristical traits as well (c minor often being connotated with heroism, for example).

The most used keys up to Mozart don't tell all that much, by the way. Because the keys with many accidentals were not in wide use yet. Before the well tempered tuning, the further apart from C a musical key was, the more 'out of tune' it would sound. Anything with more than three accidentals was a pretty excentric choice, and that tradition resounded even in Mozart. That's where the idea of characteristics of musical keys originates, because before the well tempered tuning keys differed in the spacing of their intervals.


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## Ashley Kampta (May 15, 2017)

I find my favourite key tends to change with my mood or where I'm at creatively. Currently, I'm loving Bb minor. There's just something about the way it sounds that is unlike any other key. There's a depth and richness to it that I'm really being inspired by at the moment. My most recent orchestral piece (which was recently performed) was composed in Bb minor. Some of the amateur string and woodwind players in the orchestra complained a little, but the pros were fine with it. Brass players loved it. The brass were definitely the stars of the piece.

It went down very well with musicians and audience alike, in the end.


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## Jaap (May 15, 2017)

I really love Ebmin. It has some kind of dark atmosphere around it. I started to love it when I wrote last year a theater piece for alto flute, storyteller and piano and on the alto flute it has such a great, dark, but also slightly fragile (in a good way) sound. It is really different then for example Dmin or Emin or Fmin. Since that moment a lot of my pieces have been composed with the scale of Ebmin as basis


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## mikeh-375 (May 15, 2017)

mines the Vienna key


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## tokatila (May 15, 2017)

Jaap said:


> I really love Ebmin. It has some kind of dark atmosphere around it. I started to love it when I wrote last year a theater piece for alto flute, storyteller and piano and on the alto flute it has such a great, dark, but also slightly fragile (in a good way) sound. It is really different then for example Dmin or Emin or Fmin. Since that moment a lot of my pieces have been composed with the scale of Ebmin as basis



Because of the tessitura? Can't understand how it can be different otherwise than Dmin or Emin.


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## Living Fossil (May 15, 2017)

muk said:


> Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart wrote a book about the characterstics of musical keys. Beethoven made some notes that show at least a passing interest in the matter. In one of his sketchbooks he scribbled: 'b minor dark musical key ["h moll schwarze tonart"]. And there is something to be said for that some of his larger works that share the same key often share other characteristical traits as well (c minor often being connotated with heroism, for example).
> 
> The most used keys up to Mozart don't tell all that much, by the way. Because the keys with many accidentals were not in wide use yet. Before the well tempered tuning, the further apart from C a musical key was, the more 'out of tune' it would sound. Anything with more than three accidentals was a pretty excentric choice, and that tradition resounded even in Mozart. That's where the idea of characteristics of musical keys originates, because before the well tempered tuning keys differed in the spacing of their intervals.



Still, one has to keep in mind that the concert pitch changed over time (it was fixed at 409 Hz in 1788 in Paris), and before the 19th century was quite different in different places.

When composers who work at the keyboard talk about their preferences, it has rather to do with autosuggestion due to the mechanical structure of the keyboard. Black notes give another sensitive response than white keys.

Another thing has to be kept in mind:
When movies are released on DVD, quite often the frame rate changes from 24 to 25 and so the music is heard a halftone higher.
Still, most scores work perfectly fine at the higher tuning and don't lose their tonal characteristics.
(Beside the fact that pitching music up nearly a halftone is barbaric).


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## Flaneurette (May 15, 2017)

mikeh-375 said:


> mines the Vienna key



I wonder when they're going to support the iLok key.


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## Flaneurette (May 15, 2017)

Living Fossil said:


> When composers who work at the keyboard talk about their preferences, it has rather to do with autosuggestion due to the mechanical structure of the keyboard. Black notes give another sensitive response than white keys.



Yes, exactly.


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## SchnookyPants (May 15, 2017)

I have two; the Dry Tortugas and Boot Key.


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## NoamL (May 15, 2017)

D Flat!


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## CT (May 15, 2017)

I overuse E, especially minor modes on E. No idea why.


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