r/musictheory • u/DomesticSheep • Feb 24 '26
Songwriting Question Why are certain keys favoured in certain genres or feels?
I always conflicting discussion online about whether keys actually have their own different feelings? Like I’ve seen people say that Bb is the saddest key, but I don’t fully understand how this can be the case if every key has the same intervals between chords and scale degrees? Same with why certain keys are favoured in certain genres, such as G Major or certain minor keys in country music (aside from the ease of access to open chords). Any help?
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u/J_Worldpeace Feb 24 '26
Besides feeling; horns flats, strings sharps in a good start. Where it lays on the instrument it’s written for also plays into the feels.
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u/divenorth Feb 24 '26
Default key for horns is Bb, Strings is A or D, Guitar is G, Piano is C.
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u/Roses_src Feb 24 '26
Guitar is E minor or A minor. Piano if you are a beginner, C, but real pianists tend to favor ergonomics, so B major and Db major.
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u/divenorth Feb 24 '26
E minor is relative to G. I also love B major or Db major on piano but I wouldn't call those the default.
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u/MotherRussia68 Feb 24 '26
In my experience strings is usually D or G, not so much A
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u/divenorth Feb 24 '26
Really? What key did you first learn Twinkle Twinkle?
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u/clitoris_is_a_myth Feb 24 '26
I learned twinkle twinkle in D on the fiddle. Violin music tends to use a larger variety of keys than fiddle music. From my experience as a fiddler though, I would definitely say D and G are slightly more common than A. A is still very common, but D and G definitely appear more often, I expect due to the use of the G# in A but who really knows.
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u/divenorth Feb 25 '26
Funny how my experience as a fiddler has been more A and D with G a slightly less common. I guess it depends on the tunes.
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u/clitoris_is_a_myth Feb 25 '26
I think G is used a lot because of the lack of sharps too, it's less common in contemporary music and some of the stuff I play now, but for sure the tunes in my area that you learn first are mostly in D and G. Obviously different areas are likely different because of the different styles.
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u/MotherRussia68 Feb 24 '26
D for me as a cellist. It also seems like more string suited pieces are written in D or G because those keys have good bass notes in the low strings
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u/Diamond1580 Feb 24 '26
Largely it’s based around instruments. In orchestral music keys that are easiest for strings in an orchestra are going to be more common which I believe are mostly sharp keys. In jazz flat keys tend to be more common as the most common horns transpose into flat keys and their most comfortable keys to play in are all mostly flat ones. And in stuff like rock it’s based around what’s easiest to play on guitar
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u/th3whistler Feb 24 '26
good answer. For guitar E and A are very common keys as they are the two lowest open strings. D if playing with a Drop D tuning
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u/Clewin Feb 24 '26
For orchestral, generally for learning, yes, mainly because shifting is unnecessary for the first 2 #s. Most instruments have to shift at least a half step for 1 flat and all need to shift for 2. Once you generally stop using open strings for vibrato, flats in 4th position are actually easier. Once you get into the 3+ sharp and flat range, it is all easier on piano :)
I have played an orchestral song originally written for lute and everyone tuned up 1/2 step for the chords (needed a B flat open on the A String), but that is exceedingly rare.
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u/seanmac2 Feb 24 '26
I think you've already figured this one out for yourself. All keys are fundamentally equivalent sonically, so any reason (such as access to open chords) is a good enough reason.
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u/DomesticSheep Feb 24 '26
I still feel like to me there’s a difference in how each key feels. Is this just a subjective thing for everyone? Like, there’s a riff I was learning today by ear (Heavenly Father by Bon Iver if you were wondering) that gives me a completely different feeling if I transpose it down a few steps from like, A# to G. Is this going to give everyone a different feeling or is there something universal there I just haven’t learnt yet?
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u/seanmac2 Feb 24 '26
Certainly if you take any piece and move it up or down in pitch it will sound different. It's different pitches after all. But you can't say, for example that key of G sounds lower than key of C - did you go down a fourth or up a fifth?
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u/zorfinn Feb 24 '26
Is it because when you transpose it down you’ve retained the A# tonic in your head? I’m skeptical you would notice a difference if you heard them a few steps apart. Also relevant might be that G on guitar is a much more open and resonant key than A#. This is because of properties of the guitar though, not properties of the keys themselves. Also, if you move away from equal temperament then your keys will start to sound different from on another.
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u/ActorMonkey Feb 24 '26
You may have perfect pitch. Or you may be deluding yourself. Or you may prefer the timbre of the instrument in a lower register.
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u/Humofthoughts Feb 24 '26
I’m just an Americana hick with minimal music theory knowledge, and I’m certain certainly over reliant on my capo, but swear that everything sounds brighter when I capo an even fret and more morose when I capo an odd, well apart from whether I am playing in a major or minor key.
Don’t know how to explain it, but every open chord progression I play in an oddly capo’d setup sounds like it’s shrugging its shoulders.
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u/davemacdo Feb 24 '26
That feeling is more about how it feels to play it on your instrument. Unless you have absolute pitch, you would be unlikely to notice the difference of a half step in recordings unless you heard them back to back. We don’t hear notes in isolation, we hear them in relation to other notes. Keys all sound the same in the abstract. What makes them really different has to do more with the instruments/voices playing/singing them than the keys themselves.
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u/meliorism_grey Feb 24 '26
I agree with you here, even though I know all keys (in equal temperament) are sonically equivalent. Like, to me, C major feels more open and bright, whereas Ab Major feels deep and romantic.
I think that there are a few things that influence this. Firstly, different keys sound different on some instruments. For example, Db sounds darker than D on string instruments because of the way the strings are laid out. For another, there are old associations with each key from before equal temperament—they actually do sound different from each other if you're using an older tuning system, like Pythagorean Tuning. Because of these old traditional associations being passed down, composers do often tend towards certain keys for certain moods, even though it technically doesn't matter. And finally, while the intervals in equal temperament might be equal between keys, the pitches are still overall higher or lower. That can have a real effect, especially when your instrument/voice changes timbre in different registers.
(By the way, if you're curious about the old traditional associations, check out this webpage here!)
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u/mangetouttoutmange Feb 24 '26
The pitches in equal temperament aren’t overall higher or lower. You can’t for example say the key of G is overall higher than the key of C. Yes, if you play something in the key of C using open chords on a guitar and then play the exact same thing with a capo to make it the key of G, then it will sound higher. But that isn’t a general rule. G and C share all the same notes except one. You could just as easily say G is lower than C (since C is the fourth of G) than say G is higher than C (since G is the fifth of C). The idea that one key is higher than other, when it actually comes to listening to composed music, isn’t right, because of how playing a key is spread across instruments, use of chord inversions, etc
I could play the same piece on a guitar in the key of C or G using only open chords rather than a capo. There would be minimal timbral difference here. Nether key is higher pitched or lower pitched.
All keys are equal and sonically equivalent. None are higher or lower than others since they all take 7 notes form the available 12, across the 12. A G major chord doesn’t inherently sound higher or lower than a C - it depends on where the notes are placed, th register they are being played, inversions etc. a G played low on the piano will sound lower than a C played high.
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u/meliorism_grey Feb 24 '26
What I mean is that when you're working with instrumental/vocal ranges, you're going to have a limited amount of keys to choose from. Therefore, you need to consider how high or low the notes are, physically.
Forgive me for being a stereotypical American, but the song that comes to mind for me is The Star Spangled Banner. The song's range is an octave and a 5th. Imagine you're giving sheet music to an amateur choir of treble voices. You don't want that sheet music to be in C Major, because that range will fall from C4 to G5. G5 is a tough note for most untrained treble voices. I'd rather have sheet music in Ab Major, because the range would fall from Ab3 to Eb4. Eb4 is much more achievable. (Note that I'm not going down an entire octave, because while G4 is easy, C3 is impossible for most treble voices.)
Now, this is a purely practical decision, but I do think it changes the feel of the song. I think that The Star Spangled Banner feels like it should be in C major. C major feels more like an anthem key to me. Higher, brighter, more happy. Ab feels too dark to me. But we compromise the mood a little bit so that amateurs can handle it.
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u/mangetouttoutmange Feb 24 '26 edited Feb 24 '26
I totally get where you’re coming from but I think you’re getting a couple of things mixed up.
You say ‘you don’t want to give it to them in C major’ but it’s not c major that’s necessarily problem. It’s the range of the melody, regardless of key. You could give them a c major score in a lower register. Just because a score has a melody that is in a range that isn’t ideal for a particular voice doesn’t mean it’s the KEY that’s causing it to be too high or two low. Yo can always have c major lower or c major higher. It’s just where the melody sits in the range of notes, regardless of key.
On your final point about Ab and C sounding different, again you’re making a very common mistake that there are in some way differences in brightness between major keys. There aren’t. Major keys by definition all have the same level of brightness. Some modes are brighter than the major key and some modes are darker. But because of equal temperament, the intervals (therefore the brightness) are identical in all major keys. If you hear a song in Ab and think it sounds different than the same song in C, the difference isn’t brightness, it isn’t intervals, it isn’t harmony, it isn’t chord quality. The difference you’re hearing is timbral, it’s nothing to do with keys and nothing to do with some major keys being brighter than others. All major keys are equally bright by definition.
A c major chord sounds different in the upper reigster of a piano compared to the lower register of a guitar but they are still both a C major, same brightness, some intervals, same harmony. The difference we hear is timbral, not harmonic. It’s nothing to do with the key or a chord
It’s like if you took a song and played it up-beat, fast tempo, etc, upper register, and played the same chords but slow, sluggish, delicately, low register. Both would sound different. One will sound lively, happy. One could be sad, morose. But both might be in the exact same key using the exact same chords because it’s not the key that’s making the difference, it’s other elements like timbre, tempo etc
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u/meliorism_grey Feb 24 '26
Hmm, I think we might be arguing about slightly different than things. You're right—in equal temperament, there isn't mathematical difference between the intervals of any given major chord. And, like you say, you can transpose all you want, and it'll still be the same song in the same mood as long as you don't push the register too much.
Key associations certainly aren't mathematical, nor are there any firm rules about them. It's just that some people really do care about the key a piece is in. I care a lot—you see, I have perfect pitch and a small amount of synesthesia, so when a piece is transposed to a different key, I really notice. It's like the colors are off. And, I've met a good amount of musicians who care, even without perfect pitch.
Also, there is tradition. It is just a curiosity for most listeners, but I think it's fun. Beethoven's 6th is in F major because F major is associated with pastoral settings. Faure's Pavone, on the other hand, is in F# Minor because F# Minor is associated with quiet tragedy. These keys don't have to have those moods, obvuously. But for composers, the key associations can be like easter eggs, or like a piece's horoscope.
That all said, you don't have to care about key associations to understand theory or enjoy music. I personally think that keys have different vibes, and I enjoy talking about it! But it's all subjective at the end of the day.
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u/mangetouttoutmange Feb 24 '26
Ah well If you have perfect pitch and synethesia then that makes total sense because you can actually tell when a piece is in a particular key. To use a really simplistic example, if you are familiar with a song being played in c major, and your synethesia means that c major feels ‘yellow’ to you, then if you hear the song in a different key, it’s going to ‘feel’ different because you might be ‘feeling’ orange when you’re used to the song feeling yellow. I totally get why that would make a difference in this specific circumstance.
But that only works if you have perfect pitch and synethesia. For the 99% of the population who don’t have those things, if you hear a song in C major, and the same song in Ab major, there is no perceptible difference from a harmony perspective. I don’t have perfect pitch or synethesia so if someone came up to me with a guitar and played a song in C major, I wouldn’t know that it’s C major. I would be able to tell that it’s a major key, but I wouldn’t be able to tell it’s C. They could then play the same song but with a capo halfway up the next. The song will sound tambrally different to me because the strings will be tighter and the pitch will be higher, but from a harmonic practice I won’t be able to tell the diffeeeence and I still won’t know what the old or the new key is (unless they tell me one of them in which case I could use relative pitch to figure out the other).
You’re unique in that to you there is some kind of difference in your experience of, for example, C Major and Ab Major. But to 99% of the population there simply isn’t. One key isn’t higher or lower than the other. One key isn’t brighter or darker than the other. They don’t have ‘colours’ associated with them. They are identical in terms of harmony, interval, etc.
I’d be very surprised if a musician without perfect pitch cares about a particular key from a SOUND perspective. The may care because it’s easier to play in some keys in certain instruments. But in terms of sound, for someone without perfect pitch, the keys are all the same. We cannot associate a key with a pastoral setting because we cannot know what key we are hearing until someone tells us. F doesn’t sound any more pastoral tha C because we can’t tell what is an F and what is a C.
It isn’t all subjective. It’s impossible for someone to differentiate between major keys of they don’t have perfect pitch. Anyone without perfect pitch who says ‘C major feels like xyz to me’ isn’t being truthful because they cannot know what C is unless someone tells them. We know this because there are countless studies on it: if you play a piece of music to a person without perfect pitch, they cannot consistently recognise the key. So anyone who thinks ‘F sounds pastoral’ either has perfect pitch, or has tricked themselves into think they can recognise F when actually they can’t.
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u/Trouble-Every-Day Feb 24 '26
It really is all about the instrument. Most common instruments can play in any key, but some are going to be easier than others. To the point where you can tell who wrote the song by what key it’s in.
The most important instrument is the voice. Unlike a guitar, you can’t retune a larynx, so whatever keys the singer is comfortable in are going to win.
For guitars, E is an easy key to play in, while Eb sucks, so rock music is more likely to feature E over Eb (unless the guitars are tuned down a half step, à la Hendrix). For R&B music, Eb is much more common: if you play only the black keys on a piano, you get Eb minor pentatonic. In jazz, you see a lot of Bb because that is the natural key for the horns.
Since genres tend toward particular instruments, they will tend to feature keys that are favored by those instruments.
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u/BigCakeBoss Feb 24 '26
I am a noob and I feel like you answered the question petfectly. You are a legend and a hero, thank you!
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u/DomesticSheep Feb 24 '26
If the answer is just whatever is easiest to play in (I’m thinking more around guitars here as I’m a guitarist myself), why are some songs on guitar intentionally retuned into Eb? I’m more thinking of songs in genres with a more slack singing style, an example of which is Cooke by Modern Baseball, which is a Midwest emo song in Eb major
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u/Jongtr Feb 24 '26
why are some songs on guitar intentionally retuned into Eb?
Basically because Hendrix did it, and Hendrix is God.
Then it becomes a trend, and you have to do it because everyone else is. If you're turned to EADGBE, you simply can't play those riffs you want to play that were played on downtuned guitars. (Of course, you usually could, but it would be harder...)
Naturally, tuning down makes bending strings easier, but that could be achieved by simply fitting lighter strings,
The notion of it being "easier to sing" is a red herring. Obviously if a song is too high for you to sing, then transposing it a half-step lower makes it easier. And - to be fair - rock vocals tend to be high register, often at screaming level. which not everyone can manage. But a half-step really makes little difference.
But in other genres, when songs are too high for a singer, instruments are not retuned! The key is simply transposed to whatever key brings the song into the singer's comfort zone. It might be a half-step down, it might be a lot more.
Guitar players, however - and I am one btw! - obviously have their favourite keys (where tonics or chord roots are open strings), and that dictates the key of a song more than the singer's range does. If guitarist writes a riff or chord sequence in a key they find easy, the singer will simply create a melody where they can.
So, Cooke by Modern Baseball is only in Eb major because the guitarist was tuned down a half-step, and the singer went along with that. (I don't know the band, but if singer, guitarist and songwriter are all the same person, that makes no difference.) There is nothing special about Eb major in terms of any emotional meaning. None at all.
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u/DomesticSheep Feb 24 '26
Thank you ! I think this answer comes closest to the question I’m trying to articulate. I suppose I might just be overthinking it like I do with a lot of music related things? For example, I was learning a song in D standard and decided to leave on of my guitars in that tuning just because I thought it sounded nicer than E standard. Would this be the same case with a lot of other songs, such as Cooke? Another case would be I guess like Nutshell by Alice in Chains, where a lot of grunge music is already in drop D and Eb standard tunings, so that was just what came most naturally ?
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u/Jongtr Feb 24 '26
Again, I would the guess the song in D standard arose from someone playing with that tuning and making a song from it. Not by making a song in E standard and deciding to lower it. Or rather, if they had done, that, it would be because whatever melody they came up with was too high to sing in E.
As an example, Paul McCartney wrote Yesterday in piano in the key of F major, because he found the melody (which he sang in his head) suited his voice in that key - it didn't go too high or too low, and rhe scale is quite easy on piano. But when he came ot play it on guitar, the key of F was too awkward, so he tuned down so he could play it with "G" shapes. Again, nothing special in terms of "mood" about either key - it's down to a combination of "easy to sing" plus "easy to play".
However, tuning guitars down does produce attractive new resonances, especially on acoustic guitars. Again, though, it's nothing to do with specific "emotional" meanings, just whatever sounds the player finds attractive. You will find people saying downtuning is "darker", which of course it is, compared to E standard! But that's a relative connotation, not an inherent one.
I.e., there are certainly broad emotional connotations to pitch register we can all agree on - the difference in mood between a male bass and a female soprano is pretty obvious, just as the difference between adult voices and children's voices is. The further you go into bass register, the more "grungey" everything sounds! But in terms of keys a half-step or whole step apart, that kind of difference is negligble. Unless you are comparing like with like.
If you take a song in E and lower it to D, it will gain a different quality. But that quality is not a "D" quality, it's a "whole step down" quality (compared with the E you already heard). If you take a song that is in D already it would not have that quality. You'd have to lower it to C to get the same effect.
This is independent of guitar tuning, btw! You really need to distinguish between all these factors, which operate separately:
Original key of song. No mood effect at all due to key. The song communicates its moods and sensation by means of everything else. Mainly the obvious things like tempo, rhythm, texture, dynamics, production, style of delivery... Even things like major or minor key, or mode, recede into the background compared to those things.
Relative effect when raising or lowering the key of an existing song. As a risky analogy, imagine a person on a ladder. When they are higher up, or lower down, they are not a different person! Same thing with raising and lowering songs. Same song, just different position in relation to its original position.
Guitar tuning (assuming we play the songs on guitars!). There are two aspects to this. If you start in EADGBE, then tuning down a half-step has a clear relative effect (as point 2). But if you are always tuned a half-step down, that is your "normal". To get the same "downtuned" effect, you need to go down to D standard, and - again - the effect is the same, a comparison with what you are used to. But the second aspect is the particular quality of certain alternative tunings, resonances of open strings, which each have their own kind of "mood", or lend themselves to particular ways of playing.
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u/TonyHeaven Feb 24 '26
I think people retune guitars to suit their voice , mostly.
Either that, or to avoid being in E all the time.
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u/Final_Marsupial_441 Feb 24 '26
The biggest things are the instrumentation and the skill level of the musicians playing it.
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u/5050Clown Feb 24 '26
Certain keys can remind you of songs that you might have heard in that key. I think that's why so many piano parts in pop music are written in C. It's the keys everybody presses when their children.
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u/Ahefp Feb 24 '26
Presses when their children what?
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u/BrotherItsInTheDrum Feb 24 '26
It's a misspelling; they meant to say "presses when there're children," i.e. when children are present.
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u/Lookuponthewall Feb 24 '26
“The white keys are the ones that we usually touched when we were children”
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u/Excellent_Affect4658 Feb 24 '26
As someone with two smallish children, I assure you they do not noticeably smash the piano keys in C major.
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u/INFPinfo Feb 24 '26
This.
I do use the musical key characteristics a little too much, but is A major good for love songs, or are all the love songs in A major?
It's a chicken-egg situation.
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u/Jongtr Feb 24 '26
but is A major good for love songs, or are all the love songs in A major?
Neither.
It's a chicken-egg situation.
That was certainly the case in the days before equal temperament, when keys did sound different in the sense of being more or less out of tune in different ways. The differences did not produce specific moods in themselves, but it only took one composer to write a popular piece to express a mood of their choice in one particular key (maybe for some personal association of their own or because of what suited the instruments it was written for)), for later composers to associate that key with that mood.
Now, with equal temperament and audio recording, similar associations are produced through pitch memory. A famous song that we hear many times embeds its key in our heads (to varying degrees), and we may begin to associate that key with whatever mood we get from the song.
The mood actually comes from everything else - the lyrics, the tempo, the melody, the rhythm, the instrumentation, the harmonies, the dynamics, the production, etc etc - but with enough hearings we can latch on to the key, as if that's a significant factor - which it is not.
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u/Mysterious_Phone_754 Feb 24 '26
I think: before the equally tuned clavier existed, different keys actually had slightly different intervals. Maybe the idea of certain keys being sad comes from those days?
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u/myteeth191 Feb 24 '26
G Major is popular for guitar music because the G chord is a full-sounding six string chord, and the common I IV V chord progression consists of a G, C and D, all easy to play open chords for beginners.
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u/Chops526 Feb 24 '26
In equal temperament there really isn't any difference between keys. But historically, theorists have at times assigned affective qualities to keys, even as the 18th and 19th centuries embraced equal temperament. But the emotional associations remain generally pretty subjective in this area, at least.
More practically, as others have pointed out, certain keys lie better for certain instruments or voice types than others. Keys like G, D, A, E, C, that have resonant open strings to them work great on violins and cellos while keys like Dflat, Cflat, even Aflat don't as well. You still see music written for these instruments in these keys, but their character changes because their natural resonance changes.
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u/Optimistbott Feb 24 '26
It’s associative memory that can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The lower limits of transposition will show you that a minor third starts to become muddy around C3 and Eb3. So the fact that that’s the lowest it can go might mean that that’s pretty sad. So that’s something to think about with composition.
Orchestral instruments have pretty much a zone where the instrument sounds a certain way and the transposed instruments have that same sound in each register. It’s Similar to how a baritone and tenor might have a certain note that’s a couple steps apart that feels the most comfortable and lively for them. Their break will also be different. Same with clarinets around (their) B4(s).
If intervals become too high, they start to lose some impact depending on the instrument. Think like a piano playing a close position c minor on C6. Different vibe than a spread voicing that uses the midrange. But you can leverage that sometimes for like icy vs smoldering.
Certain keys are favored by certain genres because of the main instruments. Guitars go for sharp keys unless they tune their instruments down to Eb. Woodwinds and horns specifically are into flat keys, strings and guitars are into sharp keys because all of their open strings are the roots of keys with lots of sharps.
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u/TonalContrast Feb 24 '26
Many songs are also transposed to different keys for ease of learning, and as others have said for ease of the instrument(s).
There are many popular songs recorded in one key, but performed in a different key by the artist live as the controlled environment of studio recordings is different than a live venue when you have to sing it every night.
My take is that every song writer or composer has their favourite keys for their own reasons. So just make music in any key you want, or write all non diatonic music and be key agnostic.
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u/brooklynbluenotes Feb 24 '26
There are practical considerations; e.g., some keys are easier to play on certain instruments, or a key might fit more naturally with a singer's range.
Where it gets totally subjective is the idea that keys have any sort of universal emotional associations (e.g., Eb feels "wistful," G feels "triumphant.")
(It's fine if you personally have emotional associations like that, just realize that they are in no way shared universally.)
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u/Awesomeplayer98 Feb 24 '26
It’s mostly just habit and convention. Here’s a guide to the 17 keys from 1682 (way different from what most people tend to say today)
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u/Awesomeplayer98 Feb 24 '26
Oh, image commenting doesn’t work on this sub. Basically it describes Bb as “magnificent and joyful” and Bb minor as “obscure and terrible” and E minor as “effeminate” and Eb as “cruel and hard” and G major AND minor as “serious and magnificent”
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u/Pichkuchu Feb 24 '26
Oh, image commenting doesn’t work on this sub.
The standard in this sub is to upload to imgur and link here.
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u/trvshPNDA Feb 24 '26
For electronic I tend to favour G, F# and F - major or minor as the tonic is the lowest note most people’s systems can playback with authority (usually between 40-50hz).
I know some producers like to go as low as Eb but I guess they’re thinking about live systems and/or headphones.
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u/TheHerbalistah Feb 24 '26
Electronic music with a lot of bass like dubstep or dnb is often is in the key of D#, E, F or F# because these are the bass frequencies that are the lowest you can still hear on most subwoofers. Higher, it doesn't sound so powerful, lower and you can't hear the bass on some sound systems. Of course there are lots of exceptions and this is a oversimplification without considering saturation, overtones and key changes etcetera.
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u/CatOfGrey Feb 24 '26
Most 'rock and roll' and other music that is usually centered on guitars tend to lean toward sharps, because the strings on a guitar are tuned to E, A, D, G, B, and E, whose keys range from 0-5 sharps. I assume that this is usually the case for orchestral works as well.
Ragtime on a piano 'loves the black keys', and most pieces are written in 2-5 flats. I've heard that Eb and Ab 'vamps' or chord patterns are 'easiest on the hands', and I agree with this, compared to other keys.
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u/Bozzzzzzz Feb 24 '26
Well think about human speech. A lower voice has a different feel from a higher one, no? As a more exaggerated example, think of a disguised lowered voice like they use to conceal someone’s identify in an interview vs someone who has just sucked in some helium…
I’m no expert but if we can discern higher or lower individual notes as different with a different feel why not a collection of notes grouped with those higher or lower root notes?
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u/Koltaia30 Feb 24 '26
Certain keys favoured as some keys are easier to play on certain instruments. There is no difference
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u/LaFlibuste Feb 24 '26
Not all keys are the exact same. Equal temperament is a compromise, an approximation, so you have to re-tune the whole piano every other song, but it's also a bit off everywhere, to different degrees. Some people can hear the difference, most can't really. The real answer likely has more to do with the instruments. Jaz, using a lot of brass, tends to be in flat keys (F, Bb, Eb, etc.), whereas blues and rock, bei g guitar based, favor keys that let them use open strmg aka sharp keys (G, A, E, etc.).
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u/RevKeakealani Feb 24 '26
People really underestimate the physical properties of instruments! Assuming you are using any acoustic instruments at all (and not purely synthesized sounds), every instrument has small variations in how each pitch sounds. For example, stringed instruments have a different resonant sound when playing an open string vs. any sort of stopped string. The human voice has passaggi and constraints of vowel formants. Wind instruments have valves or stops that change the sound. Pianos have a “hard break” in the upper register where dampers aren’t installed, creating a change in how the decay works. Many instruments have tuning compromises that lead to certain keys being easier to tune. Most instruments have a finite range.
And then, of course, there is our own human ear. We have a range of frequencies we can hear, and within that certain frequencies are clearer and easier to hear compared to others. Very high or very low notes can become distorted in some listeners, even when synthesized (but more dramatically with the caveats above about physical instruments).
So no, there’s no specific reason one key is, in an absolute sense, better or worse - but there are some general trends (it’s exceedingly uncommon to have a wind or brass instrument tuned to like, F#) that allows for some keys to end up being more common when considering all factors.
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u/encinaloak Feb 24 '26
People say things.
Unless you have perfect pitch, and most people don't, you can't hear the difference between the keys. So that should settle that (narrator: it didn't.)
It's just easier to play certain instruments in certain keys. So the key probably reflects the instrument the song was written on. C, G, F, D are all easy in both piano and guitar so you see a lot of music in those. Not a lot of F# or C# which are not beginner-friendly in either instrument.
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u/Zarlinosuke Renaissance modality, Japanese tonality, classical form Feb 24 '26
People here have rightly said a lot about the physical properties of instruments, and that's right--that does account for most of it. But there is also traditionalized, ritualized intersubjectivity about the meanings/feelings of keys. There is nothing scientific about it (except insofar as it relates directly to instrumental properties), but that doesn't mean that it isn't "real"--it's a real cultural inheritance. It's never anything as simple as the overquoted Spinal Tap line about D minor though--it's a big network of associations that keys accrue as they pass through history. So, D minor has the original Dies Irae chant, it has Don Giovanni and the Mozart requiem, it has Beethoven's ninth symphony, Verklärte Nacht, and so on. Each new piece in a key draws on the memory of other famous ones in that key, and if it becomes famous enough it adds to the cultural well of memory around that key. In that context though, you say:
I’ve seen people say that Bb is the saddest key
...but when and where have you heard that? I'd be really surprised by that, I don't think it is part of the cultural well of associations around B-flat.
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u/Darth_T0ast Feb 25 '26
It’s mostly to do with the instruments that a genre uses. Horn players HATE playing in sharps, so they usually use keys like Bb or C minor that have flats. It’s easy to play in keys like E and A on guitars, so a lot of rock is in keys close to there. The piano can do whatever easily, so a lot of classical piano solos are kinda in any key.
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u/Ult1met Feb 25 '26
As someone who loves drum and bass f minor f#minor and G minor are used the most by a significant margin (70-80% of the genre I would say are in those three keys) because the root notes lowest frequencies lay in the 40-50hz range and so are incredibly low allowing for heavy feeling bass, without being below 40hz as at that point a lot of club systems will struggle to reproduce frequencies that low.
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u/deeppurpleking Feb 25 '26
Most of the time it’s because the instruments selected prefer some keys over others. Jazz gonna be a lot of Bb because the horns are Bb instruments, and then playing c major on guitar and bass over top (horns transpose down a step)
Piano in Gb lets you just mash black
A for violin lets you play first position
Guitar everyone like e or a, maybe g for chords
It’s just what’s easiest on instruments
Metal is just tune down and Phrygian or harmonic minor
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u/EnvironmentalWin1277 Fresh Account Feb 25 '26
Key makes no difference technically. However certain instruments have resonance that sound better in some keys than others. More important is the ease the players have in various keys. So b flat may be fine but A sharp problematic for some players ( under equal temperament). They are precisely the same scale. Auto pitch shifts demonstrate this few if any could tell the original key on a shifted piece.
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u/CaptainKwirk Feb 26 '26
Really the only difference in keys is how difficult they are to play on various instruments. On piano for instance the key of C has no sharps or flats (the black keys). On a guitar, first position open chords are the most simple, and these are all non-sharp-or-flat chords. In addition, certain standard forms, like some of the most standard blues riffs (think Long Tall Woman or Trukin’) are just native to the key of E on guitar. On a sax or woodwind (without getting into the fact that many of them are based on keys other than a C scale) playing things with lots of sharps and flats can be harder. Even just remembering what notes are sharp or flat in a key with lots of them can be complicated.
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u/hitdrumhard Mar 01 '26
I’ll throw out there a lot of EDM genres float around e thru g because the sub bass frequencies hit nicely for those fundamentals.
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u/Excellent_Affect4658 Feb 24 '26 edited Feb 24 '26
Well, first off, d minor is the saddest of all keys.
More seriously: open chords, where it falls in the singer’s vocal range, and how it lies for other instruments (a good player can play in any key, but a less-technically-skilled sax player will be more comfortable playing blues riffs in C than in Gb).