Chapter 3
A musical key is an arrangement of notes in a hierarchical structure that facilitate meaningful and fulfilling music performance and creation.
As shown earlier, the major scale is a pattern that defines the intervals between adjacent notes in ascending and descending order, starting and ending at the C note position.
When you hum or sing a song at a higher or lower pitch, you instinctively maintain the corresponding intervals between the start note and all the following notes across each pitch change.
When you change a song to a higher or lower pitch, you use a technique known as transposition - you are transposing the composition to different keys.
All singers, including professionals, experience discomfort singing at higher and lower pitches. Everyone has a preferred vocal range of pitches where their voice is not stressed. Also, instruments have a limited range of note pitches.
To accommodate the pitch preferences of individual singers, and the pitch limitations of some instruments, musicians are required to transpose compositions up and down a range of pitches.
This means changing to different keys.
If we apply the same major scale pattern to each of the twelve note positions within an octave, we get twelve major scales, each with a different eight-note combination.
Crucially, by applying the same major scale pattern to all twelve tonic positions, we have ensured that the corresponding intervals are maintained between the tonic and all the other notes. Applying the major scale pattern to any tonic note position produces a palette of notes that forms a major Key with its tonic name.
A musical key is an arrangement of notes in a hierarchical structure that facilitate meaningful and fulfilling music performance and creation.
Key Takeaway
Each scale is named using a combination of the Tonic name and the type of scale applied.
For example, if we start at the G note and apply the major scale, we get the G major scale.
Musical keys are named in a similar fashion to its corresponding scale name.
For example, the G major scale will provide the notes for the G major key, which is the key of G.
Don’t worry - we will give you simple methods to make this easy!
Notes of a key are positioned in scale degree positions which are numbered from one through to seven. Each scale degree position has a hierarchical level of importance within a key.
Consonance or dissonance relationships that naturally exist with note combinations of different scale degree positions are fundamental to melody and harmony creation.
We will explain why and how these relationships impact harmony creation. We show how to make harmony flow naturally using chords from different scale degree positions. You will understand how to create compelling and attention-grabbing harmonies using appealing chord progression variations.
Each of the twelve major keys will have a different combination of white and black note positions. Intuitively knowing the position of every key's sharp♯ or flat♭ notes is one of the significant challenges when transposing on any musical instrument.
To achieve any reasonable level of musical competence, it is imperative that you intuitively know the positions of the sharp ♯ or flat ♭ notes for every key. It would help if you immediately formed the chords for the Tonic, Dominant, and Sub-dominant scale degree positions for every key.
Don’t worry, we will give you simple methods that we have developed to allow you to seamlessly transpose to any key, form chords for all scale degree positions and create progressions with melodies that are meaningful, fun and fulfilling.