What key is this song in?

Cafe Society
1

My knowledge of music theory is so vast (not very vast at all) that, when someone asks me what key a song is in, I know that a lot of the time I can just say what the opening chord is. This works pretty often when you’re talking Rock n’ Roll, I don’t know if it’s less dependable for other genres.

But I know that there are plenty of cases when this just isn’t accurate. So I’m working on learning a song that’s a little odd (not very odd, just in a little bit, and only odd for Rock n’ Roll- pretty tame within the vast expanse of the Musical Universe). I’m pretty sure the whole “Opening Chord = Key” thing doesn’t work here. But I’ll be working with a harmonica player and I need to tell him what key it’s in so he’ll know what harmonica to bring to rehearsal.

Any help would be appreciated (I’m not going to write out the whole melody, just the chords, I realized that may reduce the accuracy within which the answer can be guessed).
Verse:

Am / D / G / Fmaj7
Refrain:

A / F / G C / Fmaj7 / G / Bm7 / A
A / F / G C / Fmaj7 / G / Bm7 / E

I don’t think it’s as simple as it being in Am, especially since the Refrain opens with A. All ye Music Theory Dopers, Come help!
:confused:

2

I can’t help you much, but I can give you a better rule of thumb. A better way of determining the key is to base it on the **last ** chord in the song. Ignore any fancy additions to the chord and just go with the most obvious and basic sound. Sometimes doing the “Aaaaaaa -mennnnnnnnn” thing helps me.

3

You may need to write out some (or all) of the melody, because your chords don’t give a single key. They sort of vary between zero and 4 sharps, so maybe call it “C major with lots of accidentals” :stuck_out_tongue:

4

Aaargh! Yes, you’re right. But it will take me a while to sit down and figure it all out and write it down. I might get a chance later today.

In the meantime, educated guesses are welcome. I can definitely give him a list of harmonicas to bring, and we can work through until we find what works.

But, so we don’t spend forever fumbling through this, what is the “Short List” of harmonicas he should have on hand?

5

Both of those sequences modulate all over the place a “one key” harmonica (or whatever the correct term is) won’t cope with either, does your pal have a chromatic harp? And you know it gets more complicated with blues harp yes?

Am / D / G / Fmaj7 — C-major/A-minor with a D chord borrowed from G major?

A / F / G C / Fmaj7 / G / Bm7 / A
A / F / G C / Fmaj7 / G / Bm7 / E — Lordy! A major to C to E, maybe?

Do you have the music (not just the chords)? If so how many sharps in the key signature? That will show the main key though that won’t help your harmonica playing chum with a whole load of accidentals. Some notes from the tune would help too.

6

I just got the chords scribbled on a bar napkin. I know the melody from hearing the song before, but nothing is written down other than the chords. I am able to decipher key signatures when available- just takes me a while.

Your contribution was quite helpful though, thanks!

I’m glad to see that this is actually somewhat difficult, and that it’s not just me being dumb. :slight_smile:

Again, all educated guesses are welcome!

7

Assuming the melody walks the chords, I’d call sheet it in “D”.

8

I’d say the verse is in A minor, as the other chords use the same notes in that chord except for the D major. Seems like it would be a D minor chord, but then again I haven’t heard the tune. You might be throwing in the F sharp to make it a more happy section of that tune.

In the refrain you start out at A major then modulate to E major at the end. But to be sure, I have to hear you play it. Link to a MP3 perhaps? :wink:

9

Keep in mind that the notion of a song being “in” a key is just a convention applicable to music that follows certain rules. A song that doesn’t play by those rules would be harder to assess, and yours, at least to an extent, doesn’t.

That’s not to say that they are arbitrary rules. It’s more of an uphill struggle to compose stuff that we actually like to hear without conforming to these patterns at least somewhat. Our ears tend to like songs to hover around a key structure that it calls “home”, and to revolve to an extent around major or minor variations of one, four, five, & six. But for the sake of argument, you’re going to have jolly fun deciding what key a piece is “in” if the predominant chords are D major and A flat major (with the melody line doing cute things like staying on the same note while the supporting chord structure shifts underneath it and then heading off in the new key). If all you had of Bloodrock’s “DOA” was the verse, not the chorus, you’d pretty much be in that situation. Calling (and writing) the A flat stuff as G sharp major would be possible but wouldn’t clear up matters much.

As I said, though, our ears like matters a lot better if even weird and esoteric music comes home to rest, and “DOA” is not that much of an exception. The chorus gives you sufficient reason to toss the whole works into the first of the two offset major keys (I don’t know if it’s really D and A flat, but that’ll do as example, and in this example it would be D = the key it’s “in”).

You’ll notice the assumption that individual chorded notes or passages, at least, are “of” a definable chord-key. That, too, is a convention, one that normally applies (and which, again, our ears tend to prefer to the alternative) but not every pattern of concurrent pitches overlaid upon each other is going to yield a chord we could readily name, and it is at least theoretically possible to write a song that has none (or few of them, and with no discernable step-pattern between them), and under those circumstances you’d really be hard put to establish what key the piece is “in”.

::pauses to think of an example::

::which proves to not be so easy, illustrating my point::

Hmm, OK, Pink Floyd’s “Sisyphus Part 3” (3 short excerpts), from the album Ummagumma. Try writing out the chords for that sucker! And as a consequence of the difficulty of that, you’d be hard put to determine what key the piece is in.

10

You don’t know the name of the thing, do you?