Song Help Request "key" question

I am relatively new with the uke, i'm from kansas and sites like these are all i got to learn cuz there aint no one from here to learn from. anyways, i was in hawaii last year and bought a crappy uke, never played an instrument before and i just started watchin videos and learning more, so i got a nicer one now. but anyways, when i'm watchin a video sometimes it says its played (for instance) in the key of A, or D or B and so on... what the hell does that mean? i'm am alot better at learning visually through videos and this is killin me! please help! Also, dont know how to convert from guitar tabs to the four string! basically i cant do anything other then copy what i see on a video, sad but true haha
aloha from the kansas cowboy

Well I can answer what the key it's played in means. this means that whatever key it's in then that's means there are certain flats or sharps around the scale. so if it's in the key of C then there wouldn't be any flats or sharps it would be all natural so the notes would be C D E F G A B C. hope that helps.

The key decribes a piece of music's harmonic center. If a piece of music in the key of D, for example, then the D note is that piece's harmonic center, or "tonic."

This is kind of a music theory question which can get very complicated very quickly. The quick answer is, every note of the musical scale has a group of notes that "match" with that note.

When someone says a song or something is in the Key of lets say, C, that means that C is whats called the Root note and all the chords or notes in the song will come from the group of chords and notes that are in the key of C.


Like I said earlier this can get really complicated really fast. In fact there are entire college courses dedicated to music theory.

We're planning on doing some video lessons on basic music theory so stay tuned for those once the site gets up.

This should clear it up:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_signature

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Music_Theory/Finding_the_Key_and_Mode_of_a_Piece

Quick simplified music theory video...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=MdCTV0BNoXA

I hope this helps.

Good luck.