It’s pretty hard for me to fit that into any Western musical mode. You’ve got the notes of a C mixolydian dominant there (full scale: C D E F# G A Bb). Problem is, you have nothing to suggest major/minor tonality (E or E flat?) You could be using a blues scale (technically, C Eb F Gb G Bb C, but it’s not uncommon to add D, E natural, and A to the scale.)
Without any idea of what kind of chords sit behind this melody, it’s hard to say what scale you’re using. Are you sure C is the tonic? Also, you may be using what’s called “passing tones” which are notes outside a certain scale.
If you can write out the whole melody line with the chords behind it, I can tell you what scale/mode you’re using (assuming you are working within the Western framework.)
Eb major. I played trombone for all of my secondary education career and 2 flats aren’t quite enough and 4 are too many. I might also like Eb major 'cause I was kinda partial to 3rd position (trombones do it in 7 positions, don’tchaknow).
No ways. As pulykamell said rightly, it just feels natural. Hard to read, but once you get it, the hand just falls into the piece.
The third movement of Moonlight begins with a good bit of arpeggio runs. (link to midi file). I haven’t actively played it since high school, but if I sit at a piano, my hands just fall into it and I can pull off at least the first page without problems. I compare that to the allegro of the first movement of Pathetique, which also has blazing runs (about two minutes into this midi file). I find that piece harder, simply because of that tonic C. Not that I find Moonlight easy, but I just can fall back into it.
Just try to pull of the sweeping runs of Chopin’s Fantasie Impromptu or the second page of his C#min Waltz or the second page of the Rachmaninoff Prelude (BTW one of the most fun pieces ever to play – especially the double staved ending!) in any other key with fewer black notes or a white note tonic.
I always thought the “devil’s octave” was the tritone (2 notes separated by 3 full steps)…for example, E and A#, or A and Eb.
Does that make you an akeyist?
E major or E minor? If you meant E minor, I would agree - it’s the first key in which I became pentatonically proficient. It seems probably the most natural (don’t ask me why, but I find myself most at home in the 7th and 12th positions).
I think you’re right, since A sounds the second most “unnatural”. Furthermore, it sounds a lot like the soloes on The Wall, which seem to me to be about %50-%75 blues soloes. I was probably using the blues scale in my mind.
Here’s an example. Art songs often appear in volumes in different transpositions according to voice type, such as high (for sopranos and tenors), medium (for mezzos and baritones) and low (for contraltos and basses). Some songs, however, should not be performed in transposed versions if you have any consideration whatsoever for your accompanist. Richard Strauss’s “Standchen” (umlaut over the “a”) is a case in point. Its original key is F-sharp major, which makes the fast filigree of the accompaniment just playable, especially in the the pp sections. Another key, like F major, would be nasty to deal with physically and difficult to nuance.
I never realized I had a favorite key; though I have excellent relative pitch, I’m totally lacking in “perfect” pitch. So I made a list of some of my favorite classical pieces (I’m thinking that most popular music is transposed). And the winner, by far, is:
Classical guitarist who loves to sight read: anything and everything with sharps! C and Am, fine, too. But I usually go running screaming into the night if I have to sight read anything with flats except F and Dm, which is daft, I suppose. But other guitarists I know all say they prefer the sharp keys as well.
You didn’t ask, but I will also add that I prefer to play and sightread compound time sigs, too.
Non-music-reading longtime rock and blues guitarist (is there any other kind?).
I am surprised that I seem to be the first to mention plain old simple A. As the aforementioned type of guitarist, this is for a lot of reasons:
Your classic I IV V blues/rock progression = A D E, which means lots of resonant open strings when playing chords at the nut and the ultimate cliche set of barre chords.
A Pent (I suppose officially A minor pentatonic) is the first scale any self-respecting cliched blues/rock lead player learns. The basic set of box-shapes moving up the neck starting at G on the low E, up to the E at the 12th fret on the high e. I remember the article in Guitar Player where Eddie Van Halen introduced this as the first scale he ever learned - that was enough for me.
Playing a “cheater’s A” - where instead of using three fingers to make the chord, you just use your index finger - is, like, essential to rock. You can bounce your ring finger off the D string, 4th fret to do 50’s rock, and do hammer-on’s and pull-offs on A/3rd fret and E/3rd fret for blues, rock, hard rock, etc…
Johnny B. Goode, Rock n’ Roll (the Zep tune), All Right Now, tons of AC/DC - it’s all A, baby!
The first one I learned was Em pent. Maybe I play too much Metallica or something.
Johnny B. Goode is in Bb (though I suppose you could play it in A if you used a capo). And I would posit that AC/DC probably did as many songs in E as they did in A.
IANAMusician. I asked this question several years ago, but this seems like a great opportunity to ask it again: Why? Why is there a different “feel” or “color” for different keys?
Based on what WordMan says, it kind of makes sense for guitar, where more open strings would give different resonance. But what difference does it make to a vocalist or a piano?
Dunno. Same reason blue is a ‘melancholy’ colour in art, or that red is an ‘angry’ colour, I suppose. It’s just a feeling. Can’t get more specific than that, I’m sure someone will be along to correct me.
Am I really the only one out there who has trouble playing C# minor?
You’ll find some (rather heated) discussion of this in this thread.
One point I’d make is that the majority of instruments behave differently in different keys - all string instruments have their own tuning layout, while wind instruments have a timbre that varies through their range, and in the case of valved brass throughout each octave.
As I understand it, most wind instruments prefer flat keys (F ,Bb, Eb, Ab), and most string instruments prefer sharp keys (G, D, A, E).
As for my listening preference, I prefer F-major and D-minor, but I don’t care for the other flat keys. I consider C-major and the sharp keys “OK”, but I still consider F and Dm my favorites.
I’ve always associated notes and keys with colors, like C is red, D is yellow, E is green, F is blue, etc. I also associate colors to numbers, days of week the week, vowel sounds, etc.
I’m a guitarist who plays a lot of bottleneck, so I like an open G (or I’ll capo it up to A.) When I write in concert tuning, I usually still favor G, Em and A.
I think it makes a difference what instrument you favor. Pianists tend to favor C I think
