Key of...

Good morning everybody,

As I am progressing on my uke study, I started (or better re-started) to study music and harmony theory.

I got the circle of fifth, scale progression, pentatonic, blue scales and so on.

But I have a doubt on finding the key of a song.
I'll try to explain it : usually I find the key of a song really quickly seeing the chords in the song.

Bearing in mind that chords progression is
1st major 2nd minor 3rd minor 4th major 5th major 6th minor
it's quite simple to find the key.

But some songs made me stumble.

For example "dream a little dream of me". Lot of chord sites say "Key of C"

the chords are (in random order) : C B7 Ab G A F Fm
and in chorus : A F#m Bm E7

Chord progression in Key of C should be
C Dm Em F G Am.
No Fm, no Ab, no F#m, no E7 or E major.
Am I missing something ?

Many, many songs do stay entirely within the same key - but quite a lot change their "key centre" temporarily within the song. It usually allows the melody to wander into another little world, then - joy of joys - come back home. So the "key" of the song is the one that the melody wants to come back to after a little detour or two.
"Dream a Little Dream of Me" is one such song.. It goes into that kick-your-legs-like-a-chorus-girl middle bit ("Stars fading....." etc) then comes back home to say goodnight.
Check out this page - it gets a bit technical, but gives a good overview...

http://www.howmusicworks.org/907/Writing-Songs/Modulating-Between-Keys

Hi Strumdaddy,
technical = good for me.
It's really interesting, thanks a lot !

I've been down this same road. As soon as you find some big treatise or some chart that explains it all, you find songs that just don't want to follow the rules. It seems like song writers go out of their way to frustrate us. My nemesis was Sitting on The Dock of The Bay. I asked a member here who is very knowledgeable about music theory, chord progressions, and everything else musical, to help me understand it. In the end, it was, "look how clever he was right there, where he just went out there into no man's land, and it adds so much flavor. Who would have thought?" Anyway, I continue to try to understand it all myself, and I'll read how music works in the hopes that I will, but honestly, it is all math and math often doesn't work in the real world. Good luck, and if you ever get it all figured out, please PM me and explain it. Until then, I'm with you brother.

I think, when tunes change key mid song, they have to use certain notes/chords that are shared by both key signatures, & then later, they should return to the original key.

uke1950 said:

I think, when tunes change key mid song, they have to use certain notes/chords that are shared by both key signatures, & then later, they should return to the original key.

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You use the dominant 7th chord of the destination key to modulate.

I'll assume you're not playing the full song, but just the chorus, the way it's been recorded by countless folks.

My first observation is that, with many lead sheets you find on the net, the arrangers get chords flat wrong—or maybe they just like different chords better. In any case, often they're pounding square pegs in round holes. This appears to be a case like that.

Most glaringly, the bridge of "Dream" is in a key a major third lower than that of the main body of the song. So if you're playing in C, at the bridge it should modulate to the key of Ab. Your source appears to modulate instead to the key of A, and leading into the bridge there's probably an E7. Following the original, you'd instead have: (lead-in Eb7) Ab Fm (Db6) Eb7 … Ab G7. Note that Db6 has the same pitches as Bbm7; in the key of A, these would correlate to D6 and Bm7, hence your arranger's Bm.

In the main body of the chorus, you're seeing a phenomenon called "modal interchange" or "borrowed chords." Basically, this means that when playing in major mode, chords from the minor mode built on the same tonal base are borrowed. So in the key of C, you may see chords borrowed from C minor. In the present case, that accounts for Fm and Ab. In effect, you have temporarily changed mode.

Rather than try to reconstruct what your arranger wrote, let me give an NNS (Nashville Number System) version of the uke chords from the first part of the chorus, up to the bridge, from the original sheet music (which was notated in G major, with uke chords in D tuning, looking to me like the key of F, so you can see why I've translated to a relative, key-independent notation):
| 1 | b67 57 | 1 | 67 (5m_67) |
| 2m7 | 2ø | 1 27 | 57 |
| 1 | b67 57 | 1 | 67 (5m_67) |
| 2m7 | 2ø | 1 4m7_57 | 1 (_2m 1_b37) |

In C, this translates to
| C | Ab7 G7 | C | A7 (Gm_A7) |
| Dm7 | Dm7b5 | C D7 | 57 |
| C | Ab7 G7 | C | A7 (Gm_A7) |
| Dm7 | Dm7b5 | C Fm7_G7 | C (_Dm C_Eb7) |

As mentioned above, Ab7 is a borrowing from C minor, substituting for the more expected Dm7.

Starting at A7, we temporarily modulate into D minor. From the perspective of that key, the chords are | 57 (4m 57) | 1m7 1ø | with the disorienting and ambiguous half-diminished chord transitioning back into C major. This whole thing repeats until the last bar, which ends with an abrupt transition to the key of Ab major, introduced by the Eb7. As Petey said, this chord equates to the dominant 7th of the new key, though the jump to it is effectively out of the blue—it's not a "pivot chord" transition, where the transition chord belongs to both keys. But using the dominant 7th effectively announces where you're probably going next, and makes the key transition a little smoother. You saw a similar dom7 modulation with the A7: it doesn't really belong to C major, though you will often find the vii chord as a major chord, particularly when acting as a "secondary dominant" leading to a ii, II or IV chord. Secondary dominants by nature imply a brief change of tonality.

As you can see, B doesn't occur in the original chords, and I could only guess where your arranger used it. The return uses some slightly different chords, noticeably in the first measure and the next to last, but I doubt the B occurs in these spots.

A good example of how a key modulation makes a song more interesting is "Blue Moon".
In C the chords are a cycle of C Am Dm (or F) G7. You can keep that going for the whole song, but when you get to the Bridge:

Dm7 G7 C C7
And then there suddenly appeared before me

Dm G7 C
The only one my heart could ever hold;

Fm7 Bb7 Eb
I heard somebody whisper, "Please adore me."

G D7 G7
And when I looked, the moon had turned to gold.

... a trip into Eb breaks the relentlessness of the cycle with a little diversion, and gives you the joy of coming back again.

Is there a reason you have shared the chords in no particular order? I have been learning this song and i'm happy with the chords i'm using. Do you need the right chords?

And if you want to understand the issue you might find the answers in the free online course i'm currently doing through Coursera. It's called Fundamentals of Music Theory run through Edinburgh University. Just last night i came upon two notions which could be in play here. One is accidentals - when a note is pushed out of the key scale and brought into the melody. The other notion is about form and how songs have different parts. Different parts of the song can be in different keys, have different time signatures and no doubt have various other changes which all add up to something more interesting than when everything is done according to the rules. The thing is enough of the rules are followed to enable the song to work but at the same time, enough of the rules are broken to perhaps make the music more than ordinary and perhaps even innovative. This is how i understand it and i think it could be what you are dealing with.

Yeah... I cut and pasted from a Word document - but the formatting didn't survive.
Just strum through it and it should be easy to find where the chords change.

Hi again, mrStones! I like your threads.

mrStones said:

Chord progression in Key of C should be
C Dm Em F G Am.

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You are talking about diatonic chords in key of C.

mrStones said:

No Fm, no Ab, no F#m, no E7 or E major.
Am I missing something ?

Click to expand...

There are many songs which use non diatonic chords. Actually you can make any chord progressions with or without them.

" I have been learning this song and i'm happy with the chords i'm using. Do you need the right chords? " - AndieZ

One could certainly play the whole of "Blue Moon" entirely in the key of C and it would sound fine - but try a little detour into Eb and back and see how it sounds.
It certainly tickles me when I play it that way


And then there [Dm7]suddenly a[G7]ppeared be[C]fore me[C7]

The [Dm]only one my [G7]heart could ever [C]hold;

I [Fm7]heard somebody [Bb7] whisper, "Please [Eb]adore me."

And when I [G]looked, the moon had[D7] turned to [G7]gold.

Blue [C] moon......

Rllink said:

Until then, I'm with you brother.

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Thank you It's nice to have some emotional support.

zztush said:

Hi again, mrStones! I like your threads.

You are talking about diatonic chords in key of C.

There are many songs which use non diatonic chords. Actually you can make any chord progressions with or without them.

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Thank you zztush diatonic chords... I always heard about "chord progression". More definitions to study ! hurray

PeteyHoudini said:

You use the dominant 7th chord of the destination key to modulate.

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Thanks a lot Petey. Gave me some inspiration. By the way, congratulation for your YT channel. I like it.

ubulele said:

I'll assume you're not playing the full song, but just the chorus, the way it's been recorded by countless folks.

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Full Mama Cass version. Is it "full" or her cover was just a part ? I would be surprise...

Thanks ubulele ! I need to read and reread your post to fully assimilate all the stuff.
Thanks again !

Strumdaddy said:

A good example of how a key modulation makes a song more interesting is "Blue Moon".
In C the chords are a cycle of C Am Dm (or F) G7. You can keep that going for the whole song, but when you get to the Bridge:

Dm7 G7 C C7
And then there suddenly appeared before me

Dm G7 C
The only one my heart could ever hold;

Fm7 Bb7 Eb
I heard somebody whisper, "Please adore me."

G D7 G7
And when I looked, the moon had turned to gold.

... a trip into Eb breaks the relentlessness of the cycle with a little diversion, and gives you the joy of coming back again.

Click to expand...

Yeah another one was Blue moon
Thanks for the explanation.

My mind always try to tag everything in patterns and laws and behaviours and cause/effect, but music is creativity so she can break some rules and when she do it, it is pleasant.

mrStones said:

Thanks a lot Petey. Gave me some inspiration. By the way, congratulation for your YT channel. I like it.

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Not a problem. I try to mix a bit of comedy with my uke vids. As for modulation, I used to do a lot of it on the piano though it doesn't sound good everytime. You have to experiment and it's an art to make your way to the dominant 7th destination key. You just find the dominant 7th key and especially focus on that dominant seventh note. For example:

1) You want a starting song in the key of C to modulate to the key of Eb (Buddy Holly's That'll Be the Day is in Eb hehe).
2) What is the dominant 7th chord of Eb? Bb7
3) What is the actual 7th note in Bb7? Ab
4) Play the chord progression C, F, G7 (two times) then G, Ab, Bb, B7, Eb

0003 2010 0212 | 0003 2010 0212 | 0232 x343 3211 1211 0331

Playing the B7 and then adding the 7th note pushes the cadence to the new key. Adding the Ab chord helped push to the Bb. One can try a lot of things but you want to get to the dominant 7th chord or the IV.

Petey

mrStones said:

Full Mama Cass version. Is it "full" or her cover was just a part ? I would be surprise...

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Just a part. There are two verses that are usually skipped. For many, many older songs, singers only sing the chorus sections; consequently, most fake books only include the choruses for those songs, not the verses. In this rendition (from 1931) you can hear the band playing the tune for the verses starting around 1:20; the singer, Smith Ballew, only sings the chorus:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz_40b16Q88
This version starts with the chorus in G (bridge in Eb), then modulates to A before the verse section (there is no modulation in the original). The verse tune starts on the fourth note of the scale (D).

I've listened to the Mama Cass version and, as in your lead sheet, for the bridge she drops the key only a minor third (from D to B). To make up for it, at the end of the bridge, in addition to the half-step progression from B to A#(7), she has to drop the melody an additional half-step (accompaniment dropping to A7) in order to lead back to D.

Compare to how Ella and Satchmo handle the bridge, dropping a major third from the key of D to the key of Bb. The transition from the bridge to the return is then more natural.
Ella & Louis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxrws7omOHQ
Doris Day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7j8wa9sWOE (also in D/Bb)

In the Smith Ballew version, he sings the chorus in A, the same key as the preceding verse section, then drops to F for the bridge, another major third drop. Michael Bublé does the same, but in G/Eb.

Strumdaddy said:

" I have been learning this song and i'm happy with the chords i'm using. Do you need the right chords? " - AndieZ

One could certainly play the whole of "Blue Moon" entirely in the key of C and it would sound fine - but try a little detour into Eb and back and see how it sounds.
It certainly tickles me when I play it that way


And then there [Dm7]suddenly a[G7]ppeared be[C]fore me[C7]

The [Dm]only one my [G7]heart could ever [C]hold;

I [Fm7]heard somebody [Bb7] whisper, "Please [Eb]adore me."

And when I [G]looked, the moon had[D7] turned to [G7]gold.

Blue [C] moon......

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I'm not talking about Blue Moon. I'm talking about the song that Mr Stones mentioned in teh beginning. Dream a Little Dream of Me.