Music Banter - View Single Post - Picking the right key
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Old 09-25-2013, 10:31 PM   #3 (permalink)
Sequoioideae
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Originally Posted by FatShamer View Post
First time posting here, yada yada...
I apologize in advance for the massive wall of text

So I've been trying to write a piece of music, more specifically a song, recently and I've been having trouble picking the right key for the music. I just bought a keyboard and am not very experienced at piano but I figure, for practical purposes, it is the simplest instrument to self teach and to use to write a piece of music - the notes are lined up in ascending order and you don't really need to be proficient at the instrument to get started because the note you play will be the same pitch no matter how you press it, compared to say a violin where you really have to spend some time learning how to play or finger a string properly, but I digress.

I've noticed something that's been very frustrating: you can play a melody or piece of music in a number of different keys and they will sound relatively the same (I say relatively because if you space the notes at the same intervals but just move your hands across the piano a couple of notes, you will get roughly the same melody). Obviously there are still differences, and I'm sure that a trained musician or someone with perfect pitch would be appalled by your playing a song in a different key.

So I've been writing the notes down and have attempted playing some songs by ear, but I keep changing my starting position on the keyboard only for it to sound the same. I can hear the notes and chords in my head but when I begin to play the piano, the key in which I'm playing naturally sort of takes over and I can't compare it properly.

This also has me thinking, what if there is another key that would make the song sound better. Anyways, I'm completely lost here.

How do you guys correct for this error when writing music?
Depending on the relation to the notes in a tuning, how they sound in said tuning, and how it relates to other instruments is how I determine what key I want to play in, and my general play style also factors in. It all comes down to preference really, how you want something to sound, and if you're with a group, they can have a big influence on the key of something as well.
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