Guitar players: are some key signatures preferred or easier to play?

Cafe Society
1

I have been working with a piano fake book of rock songs that were originally arranged for guitar and electric bass. As far as I can tell, the arrangements in the book maintain the key signature in which the original song was written.

I’ve noticed that certain key signatures appear more frequently than others, e.g., E major and A major.

What I’m observing might be a quirk of the book I have, and I know that sometimes a particular key is chosen just to accommodate the singer’s voice. But I am wondering if there are certain key signatures (home keys) that are preferred by guitar players for ease of playing or some other reason?

2

The A, D, and E chords are all fairly easy to finger on a guitar. Likewise C and G.

3

Use those chords and slap a capo on and it’s all easy.

4

Yes, E and A are by far the favorites for blues and a lot of rock as they lend themselves well to the picking that’s typically done in those genres. Other guitar-friendly keys for many players are G, C, D, and, to a lesser extent, F. The accidental keys (Ab, Bb, Db, Eb, & Gb) and B are particularly tough (as in well nigh impossible) for those who only know open-position chords, although a capo can solve that problem. The picking in those keys hardly ever uses open strings and thus presents a whole new level of difficulty compared to the favored keys.

My observation is that bluegrass players favor G, D, and A (often played with G forms using a capo), and folk singers favor G and C.

5

Absolutely. Based on the guitar’s tuning, which is usually E, A,D,G,B,E there are certain keys that much more hospitable to open chords or intervals that leave unfretted strings ringing (and a more sonorous sound). Basically, the keys of E, A, D, G, and C (all major) are probably the most popular. For minor keys, Am, Em, Dm, show up often enough.

You’ll sometimes seem music with keys a half step below all those, as tuning a guitar down to E-flat instead of E is a pretty common standard retuning. See, for example, the Smashing Pumpkins album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, which I think is all in E-flat tuning. Also, see Hendrix, Vaughn, Weezer, etc. But if you’re playing a standard E-tuned guitar, the flat keys require pretty much constant barring (where you use your index finger to fret all six strings at once) to hit all the chords. Or you can use a capo.

6

Yes, this is pretty much the order I’ve observed. As a non-guitar-player, it is bizarre to flip through a long book of songs and see almost no key signatures with flats in them.

7

Obligatory *Buffy *Quote:

Oz: Well, I sorta test well. Y’know, which is cool. Except that it leads to jobs.
Willow: Well, don’t you have some ambition?
Oz: Oh, yeah. Yeah. E-flat diminished ninth.
Willow: Huh?
Oz: Well, the E-flat, it’s-it’s doable. But it’s that diminished ninth, you know, it’s a man’s chord. You could lose a finger.

8

I’ll echo what others have said. In my experience, blues is almost always played in E, or in the E position but capoed, and bluegrass in G (or capoed). I mostly play instrumental music in C, or capoed.

9

Once, long ago, when I was taking guitar lessons, I showed my tutor a piece of sheet music I wanted to learn and he had an extremely negative reaction to the key. I believe it was B-flat Major, but I could be wrong.

ETA: Upon further reflection, I think it may have been B-flat minor.

10

Those are the sax keys. :stuck_out_tongue:

11

Do you mean E-flat major? I’ve heard of this before but never understood it. Why would you tune your instruments down to E-flat rather than just write the song in E to begin with? Is it just to adjust the range for the singer?

12

If I may - the first side of ‘The Joshua Tree’ would be three songs in a row in D Major if Daniel Lanios hadn’t asked The Edge and Adam Clayton to tune down a semi-tone for “Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”. U2 songs sound similar enough to each other to begin with without doing three in a row in the same key…

A similar down-tuning - Paul McCartney singing ‘Yesterday’. The guitar is tuned down a tone, so even though the song sounds in F Major (‘Concert’ F Major, as the transposing brass and woodwind players call it.), Mr. McCartney is fingering in the key of G. Those changes from Bb to F are a big pain in the ass; C to G is infinitely easier. Do not try singing this song in the key of G - even Paul found it too high, I suspect…

13

Oh, that makes sense. “Yesterday” is in the key of F in my fake book, with the guitar tablature in F, too. (It’s still too high for me to sing, though.) No mention of the down-tuning in the fake book. I wonder how many other songs in the book are like this.

14

Yep, and on the 2nd volume of the Anthology albums, just before the first take, you can hear someone asking “What key is it in?” and Paul says, “It’ll be in F for you… I’m in G, but it’ll be in F…”

15

I mean tuning down all the notes a half-step, from E A D G B E to Eb Ab Db Gb Bb Eb. I said “tuning down to E-flat instead of E” as the first and last string of a six-string guitar in standard tuning are both E.

You can tune down for many reasons, maybe some of our resident guitar experts like WordMan can also help me out with this. The tone is a little different when you tune down a half step–the strings are at a different tension than usual, and you can get a deeper, lower “chug”. Also, since the tension is looser, you can bend strings a bit more than usual, which is why I would guess some bluesman really seem to like it. It also has the advantage of making playing with certain brass instruments (which are often Bb or Eb instruments) easier to deal with. (Although I don’t think that really has much to do with its relative popularity of it in rock music.)

As for Fake Books and keys, they’re often wrong from what is on the original recording. The other day I was flipping through and settled on “All My Loving.” The Fake Book has it in F major. The recording is in E major. I don’t have perfect pitch, but I knew something sounded a little bit different when I was playing it. I played along with the MP3 and, yep, wrong key. That’s just the first one that comes to mind. I know I have come across this countless times in Fake Books.

edit: Whoops. I just realized that the actual key for Yesterday is correct in the Fake Book. This is not always the case.

16

I understand the concept of transposing, e.g., transposing woodwinds like a B-flat clarinet part to play in the same key as a flute in C. So for the guitar, when you tune down each string a half step, does that mean that if you are fingering/reading a song in the key signature of E major, the notes sound in E-flat major as the new home key? Even if that’s not right, what you’re saying about the sound effects from changes to the tension on the strings makes intuitive sense even though I don’t play the guitar. Thanks for trying to explain.

17

In my experience, yes. The only time I can confidently recall seen a transcription was the score to Smashing Pumpkins’ Mellon Collie and Infinite Sadness. The guitar transcription had a note in the upper left saying E=Eb, A=Ab, D=Db, G=Gb, B=Bb, E=Eb, but everything was written in the non-transposed key. So, in other words, if your chord progression was (on a piano) Eb-Ab-Db-Ab, it was written as E-A-D-A in the sheet music.

It somewhat irks me that it’s done this way (since I usually follow along on another instrument), but I guess that’s what’s easiest for guitarists. Let everybody else transpose. :wink:

edit: However, I’m not sure if that’s how it’s always done. To me, it makes more sense to keep the actual music notation in concert pitch and just let the tablature reflect the actual fingering. But I’m not really a guitar player.

18

My band has been detuned (Eb) since the early '90’s.

2 main reasons- tone and vocal assistance. We’re a blues/rock trio and the detuning makes it easier to get that ‘fat’ sound happening. To compensate for the detuning my bass player and I both use thicker strings and high action. (It’s good enough for Stevie Ray Vaughan so it’s good enough for us).

On the vocal side it’s a combination of age and the performance expectations of venues. 4 x 40 minute sets are not unusual and screaming yer lungs out for two and a half hours takes it’s toll. Over the years my voice has gotten deeper and I can now reach down 3 semi-tones lower than I could 25 years ago. The downside is that I’ve lost those 3 semi-tones at the top of my range.

To answer the OP, most of our stuff is in E (Eb) or A (Ab).

As an aside, when Led Zeppelin re-united for the 2007 show in London the instruments were detuned 2 semi-tones to help Plant hit the notes. IMHO it might have helped Plant but Jimmy Page suffered all night. YMMV

-Mitch
Throat warbling and didgeridoo impressions are all part of the show

19

Sorry - didn’t see this until now.

**SEJ **- So, as most folks have discussed, with fretted instruments, de-tuning all strings a proportionate amount, so each is lowered one semi-tone is simply a choice - in effect, you have Standard Guitar Tuning a semi-tone or more lower. It would be no different than being able to stretch a flute before you play it, so the “base” tone with no keys depressed would be G, instead of A (or whatever it is).

We do it (and, yeah, I do it on pretty much all my electrics) for tone and feel. A lot of guitar players subscribe to the belief that the heavier gauge of string, the better the tone of your guitar. Some guitar players have a distorted enough signal that they can get a thick tone with thin-gauge strings (e.g., Jimmy Page) but if you prefer a somewhat-cleaner tone, string gauge is a real factor to your sound. Jazzers, who rarely bend, play with a .015 gauge on their high E string; metal players, who favor heavy distortion and a ton of bending, may play with .008’s; your average rocker will use .009’s or .010’s and Stevie Ray Vaughn legendarily used .013’s (going thinner towards the end of the tour) - his use of heavy gauge strings and his amazing tone (see post #21 in the linked thread)signalled a sea change in guitar circles when hair metal was king, with pointy guitars, locking whammy bars and thin strings.

But heavy-gauge strings are a bitch to bend - and blues and rock playing is all about bending. So as a matter of mechanics, tuning down lowers the tension of the string, making bends easier. I personally also like the feel when picking detuned, heavier gauge strings - they give good feedback, for want of a better term.

Add the fact that folks like Stevie Ray and David Lee Roth couldn’t hit the notes (neither can I ;)) and playing in Eb seems a logical choice.

As for your question in your OP - playing in E and A when using Standard Tuning just enables a player to take advantage of the physical characteristics of a stringed instrument. I typically play a Cheater’s A, where instead of using three fingers to fret the three notes required, I just use my index finger and flatten out the first joint to fret the same three note. That way I can use my other fingers to hammer-on single-note flourishes or even full new chords. And if you start in Cheater’s A, then use your middle finger to fret the G note (3rd fret) of the Low E, then hit the open Low E? That’s - well, that’s everything! I mean - starting in E, hitting that G note with your middle finger then hitting the A and then back down G to E is Muddy Waters’ Hoochie Coochie Man, Mannish Boy (youtube link - any questions?). That’s also AC/DC’s song TNT (youtube). That stuff is primal - playing in E or A unlocks the rock in a guitar.

You can also take advantage of drone strings in certain keys. The Edge and Billy Duffy of The Cult both made use of keeping the D string droning while playing partial chords up (and using a ton of delay) the neck for various hits - see She Sells Sanctuary.…

There are a LOT more techniques that take advantage of the mechanics of a guitar, but I gotta go into a meeting…

20

Bah, one semitone doesn’t give that much slack on the strings, especially when some bands (Morbid Angel and Carcass) tune 6 half-tones below, and shred the f*** out of them.