Being “In Key”
From “What Does it Mean to be ‘In Key?´¨ in Music Theory for Electronic Music Producers
Think of the key as a process of elimination. If we look at all our possible notes […], there are 12 before they start repeating. Now take any given pitch - let’s say F. Of those 12 notes, some of them are going to sound good with F, and some are not. If we use the key of F, we narrow down our possible notes to only eight. […] In this example, we would call F the “root”, the eight notes that sound good with F is the “key,” and if we put all those notes in order, it would be a “scale.”
As an answer to some of the questions in 20240901153645-Musical_Octaves & 20240901171406-Musical_Intervals, to “be in the key of¨ a given key is to be within the set of keys that sound well with that given key, that given key itself then called the root key.
Meanwhile, a scale is:
From “The Elements of a Key¨ in Music Theoryr for Electronic Music Producers
[…] an arrangement of all the notes in a key. The key itself just tells us what notes will sound good together; a scale is all of those notes in a given order: either from low to high or from high to low.
In summary,
- Key, set of keys that sound well with a chosen key
- Root, the chosen key
- Scale, the key placed or played in an order
Ambiguity of “key¨
It should be apparent that the term “key¨ in music theory can be rather ambiguous. There is the key as in the mechanical sound producer of a given instrument, in this case the standard Western classical piano keyboard . And then there is the key of “in the key of.¨ One way to disambiguate further is to start talking about the former as the associated perceived sound frequency those (mechanical) keys produce, i.e. their “pitch,¨ henceforth using the musical alphabet and its accidentals to talk about pitches rather than (mechanical) keys. This should be no problem in translating this information in a way that helps us navigate our instrument as long as our instrument is “in tune.¨ The latter, on the other hand, i.e. key qua “in the key of,¨ can then continue to be called a “key.¨
Ordering Keys
By what criteria are scales typically or conventionally ordered? Why is it important to order sets of keys in our notation, in playing them, or physically? What relevance does this order have?
root music music_theory root_key musical_scale musical_key pitch musical_alphabet tuning
bibliography
- “What Does It Mean to Be ‘In Key?’” In Music Theory for Electronic Music Producers: The Producer’s Guide to Harmony, Chord Progressions, and Song Structure in the MIDI Grid., 1st ed., 48. Minneapolis, MN: Slam Academy, 2018.
- “The Elements of a Key.” In Music Theory for Electronic Music Producers: The Producer’s Guide to Harmony, Chord Progressions, and Song Structure in the MIDI Grid., 1st ed., 49. Minneapolis, MN: Slam Academy, 2018.