What does it mean for a song to be in a given key?

I am confused by the whole musical aspects of ukulele. Musical theory, I guess? Anyway, I'm still just trying to get comfortable going from one chord to the next. I know that many songs for ukulele are in the key of C, but I feel so stupid because I don't really know what that means. If I'm supposed to play a song in a different key, what gets changed? Meaning, do I tune the instrument different, play chords different, etc.?

I am 28 and feel three. Hello.

It should be easy to explain, but as I think about it, it's not easy.

To begin, you don't have to worry about someone saying "Play it in the key of G" or whatever until you are much further along and are jamming with others. For the moment, the chords are all you have to worry about. To understand the idea of key, we begin with the basic musical scale used in western music. It's the old do-re-me thing (did you see the movie Sound of Music?). The C scale is the "starter" scale. It goes up the line as C-D-E-F-G-A-B and C again only an octave higher. You might think then that you can call the key of G, for example, is similarly G-A-B-C-D-E-F-G. (Note that we only go from A to G before repeating ourselves,) Unfortunately it's not the simple. The generic musical scale has varying spaces between the notes. All intervals between notes are full intervals except for the ones between the 3rd and 4th and the 7th and 8th (octave). The complete list of available notes provides for half intervals as well as the full intervals. This works out to A-A#-B-C-C#-D-D#-F-F#-G-G#. (You can substitute flats for sharps, for example in A# = Bb and D# = Eb, etc.

The key of the song is the basic scale used for that song - like a painter's palette of colors. The key of C is easy: C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C. When we go to any other key, we have to account for the spacing mentioned earlier. The key of G, for example, is made up of G-A-B-C-D-E-F#-G. Notice the G#. That's because the interval between the 7th note of a basic scale is only a half-step lower than the 8th.

This basic scale is called the major scale. There are other scales - just to make life interesting - but save that for another day. Note also that in a given piece you go outside the basic scale by throwing in a note that isn't in that scale. That note is then called an accidental. If this is too much to grasp, I suggest looking for some basic music theory online. I've barely scratched the surface, and it's hard to do without diagrams.

As a rule of thumb, most songs, especially folk songs, end on the note that is the key. This is confusing when you encounter a song in a minor or some exotic key, but most of the time the key seems to be major and the rule of thumb applies.

Eventually you will want to learn how chords are constructed and named, but leave that for later. That's part of music theory, which is actually very interesting, but I find best learned in chunks.

-- AL



If a song is in the key of C, it me

LazyRiver said:

The key of G, for example, is made up of G-A-B-C-D-E-F#-G. Notice the G#.

Click to expand...

F#. Typo?

The key is determined by how many sharps and flats and more importantly, it determines the chords; for example, in the key of C, the tonic chord (the one you usually end up on) is C, the subdominant is F and the dominant is the G (or G seventh for the dominant seventh.) As you play songs, you will notice that the chords follow a pattern typically. They can be as in "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" Tonic Tonic, Subdominant, Tonic. Subdominant, Tonic, Dominant Seventh, Tonic. Or CC CC FF C FF CC G7G7 C. This pattern is a typical three chord pattern. In fact, playing the uke as a kid is how I discoverd this aspect of music theory--I played by ear but played piano with music and noticed that songs had typical chord patterns on tonic, sub dom and dom chords. The minors are a third down (C major's minor is A) and it has its own set of tonic, subdom, etc.

A good book to learn about this is Learn to Read Music. While you don't need to read music to play ukulele, learning music can help you figure out tablature or to play by ear.

Hi imajical; Was were you are now a year ago. Thanks to the forums I concentrated on learning to form chords and working on songs. Lots of resources on line. The one that helped me the most was Uncle Rod and his Boot Camp. Lately have been sitting in with some great players (uke, guitars, auto harp) and just starting to get the concept of playing in keys. Even if you always play in C you will never run out of music.

I was confused when I started too. The best thing I have done was to start learning piano. It's fun, and all the music theory I need is right there on the keyboard. I'm old and slow, but it's working! Good luck!

LazyRiver said:

The key of the song is the basic scale used for that song - like a painter's palette of colors.

Click to expand...

Yeah, that's sort of the way I usually think about it and explain it to others.

You can think of all the notes on your ukulele as like being one of those giant boxes of crayons. (You know, the box with the built-in sharpener?)

A "key" is simply a particular collection eight of those notes, like a smaller box of crayons that only has eight colors out of all the colors in the big box.

When a song is in a certain key, that means that it's only (or at least mostly) using notes from that smaller collection. Which is like a drawing that only uses colors from the smaller box of crayons.

So a song in the key of G major would only (or mostly) use notes from the "G major collection of notes", which happens to be called a G major scale. The melody would use notes from that collection, and the chords would be chords that you make using those notes.

To change a song from one key to another--which is called transposing--you'd just figure out how to play it using a different collection of notes, while preserving the relationships the notes and chords have with each other. Essentially, you'd just take every note and chord in the song and shift them all up or down in pitch by the same amount.


JJ

Ukulele JJ said:

You can think of all the notes on your ukulele as like being one of those giant boxes of crayons. (You know, the box with the built-in sharpener?)

Click to expand...

And are the tuners on a uke the sharpener? (sharpener, geddit? boom boom!)

imajical said:

I am confused by the whole musical aspects of ukulele. Musical theory, I guess? Anyway, I'm still just trying to get comfortable going from one chord to the next. I know that many songs for ukulele are in the key of C, but I feel so stupid because I don't really know what that means. If I'm supposed to play a song in a different key, what gets changed? Meaning, do I tune the instrument different, play chords different, etc.?

I am 28 and feel three. Hello.

Click to expand...

You have a song in your book that you like and it is in the key of C. You try to sing it but the high notes are almost tearing out your tonsils.
What to do, what to do? ......Perhaps you have 3 chords to worry about whenever you are in C.....C, F, and G7. So you find that you can sing the whole song if you move the starting note down and it looks like you are now in the key of G (4 whole notes down) so you keep the same relationship of your new chords such as G, C and D7. I wish we could just sit down together for a coffee and have a chinwag.

Here is a great primer from the Howlin' Hobbit:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1125378/ukulele docs/cheater_theory_v2.pdf

He does a good job explaining the basics.

Hope it helps.

Thank you vanflynn for that link. I printed out page 10 of the pdf. It will make a welcome addition to my ukulele tips folder. (which I never seem to open.) HaHa!!
Thank you also imajical for starting this thread.

There was another thread that did a good job with this.

Let me see if I can paraphrase.

In the key of C you have the following notes:

C D E F G A B C

so there's a chord that goes along with each note

C D(minor) E(minor) F G A(minor) B(minor b5) C

minor is usually abbreviated simply as 'm'

minor b5 is usually abbreviated as mb5 (the lowercase b is an abbreviation for the word 'flat')

So let's go to the key of G. Another popular Uke Key

So the Notes:

G A B C D E F# G (where # is an abbreviation of 'sharp". So the note is F Sharp)

So the chords in this key are

G Am Bm C D Em F#b5 G


So now let's say you're playing a song in the key of G that you're also singing to. And there's one note to sing that's just a hair above your range. You can simply play the song a little lower in the Key of F

So in F we have the following notes:

F G A Bb C D E F

The chords:

F Gm Am Bb C Dm Emb5 F

By moving the key down a two half steps (or 1 whole step) from G to F, you now are able to sing the song more comfortably.

Hope this helps

Very good and very well written Scott, my little problem is my fiddle playing companions don't like the key of F. So it will be D or G and perhaps C maybe. The fiddle player is the Boss and I am nuthin'. I guess that makes him "Boss of nuthin' HaHa!!"

1931jim said:

Very good and very well written Scott, my little problem is my fiddle playing companions don't like the key of F. So it will be D or G and perhaps C maybe. The fiddle player is the Boss and I am nuthin'. I guess that makes him "Boss of nuthin' HaHa!!"

Click to expand...

So I think players that get stuck in certain keys do so because they're confident they can get to the right chords and notes.

So we already looked at G

G A B C D E F# G (the key with one sharp, F#)

So the Key of D adds one more sharp (C#)


So in D we have

D E F# G A B C# D

the chords:

D Em F#m G A Bm C#mb5 D


So the thing to remember is that in any key there are certain chords that are more foundational than the others

In any key you can think of the notes as numbers:
Let's use D

D E F# G A B C# D
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1

So the foundational chords

The most foundational is the key chord or the '1' chord.

In this case D

the next two chords that are very foundational are going to be 4 and 5 (G and A)

with these three chords many many songs are now in your reach regardless of key

The next foundation chord you find is the 6 chord (Bm in our D example)

With these four chords now the majority of contemporary songs are at your finger tips.

Next in my opinion is the 2 chord (Em in this example)

Now we're getting into the cool chords that make you sound like you really got it together category.

When you learn to ID these chords in the most popular keys (C, G, D, A, F, Bb, Eb) you're going to be able to play backup to most anyone regardless of their instrument.

So to sum up. Really get good at identifying the important chords in any key. the 1, 4, 5, and 6minor

Pianists and horn players like F, Bb, Eb and Ab.

Guitarists like G, D, A, and E

Singers can be all over the map. Just depends how the melody fits their voice.