[GuyBarry]

I've said a few times now that I don't really feel that my view of songwriting fits in with the views of many other people here, and I've been surprised by the number of things that established members of the forum appear not to know.  For instance, someone recently asked the question "Is there a definitive way to know for sure which key a song is in?"

Now for me, key is part of the basic language of music.  If I'm performing or rehearsing an unfamiliar piece with someone my first question is "what key are we in?"  You've got to make sure all the performers are singing or playing in the same key, otherwise it'll sound like Les Dawson.  I suppose that's why it's called "key" - it's the key to getting the whole thing together.  If you're playing in C, you know the main chords are likely to be C, G, F, A minor and so on.  If you transpose it into D, they'll be D, A, G, B minor. 

This is what I regard as pretty basic stuff.  I've known about keys and key-signatures since I was about seven, I suppose - in fact I can't remember a time when I didn't know about them.  They were part of my early musical training.  You can't learn to play the piano or any other instrument from sheet music unless you know about keys.  You can sing without knowing what key you're in - unless you've got perfect pitch, you probably won't know.  But if you play an instrument I'd have thought that it was essential knowledge.

It's not just on this forum, though.  There's a 17-year-old who performs at our community centre, and he's pretty talented on the guitar and several other instruments.  He said he was confused by key as well and asked questions like "if it's in the key of G, does that mean it starts on the chord of G?"  I explained that it didn't necessarily have to but I was surprised that it needed explaining. 

For me, as soon as I hear a piece of music I can tell you which note is the keynote.  I don't have perfect pitch, so I can't tell you the key straight off, but if you tell me that (say) it starts on an E then I can work out the key straightforwardly.  I don't even have to consciously think about it.

I would really like to know how so many experienced musicians manage to communicate with each other without knowing one of the basic concepts of music.

[shadowfax]

You don't need music theory to write songs my friend
or to communicate with other musicians..I have collaborated with a guitarist in the USA on a few songs and neither of us discussed key..
I collaborated with a professional singer in the USA, she never mentioned key...
all they wanted was the chord sequence..which is maybe the same thing..
but it's actually very easy for like minded non theoryists in music..to communicate..
just as it's very easy for like minded people with music theory to communicate..

we all manage, and that's the main thing my friend..

best, kevin

[delb0y]

One of my auditory ambitions, albeit one I suspect I'll never achieve, is to be able to do that thing that a lot of jazzers can do (probably many other genre-ers, too, but it's just the jazzers that I've witness do it) whereby they don't even need to ask the key, they just listen and know. Now and again I've managed it - but it's always been more luck than judgement. I end up have to quietly fumble my way into a song whilst I try and determine the key. Or ask, of course.

Those darn jazzers can hear all the changes, too. But's that's another ambition.

[tboswell]

Keys are a construct placed on music with our western musical history and values. All theory came after the music NOT before.
Things like the minor and major scale did not exist in the same way we have today till the 18th Century, there were many modes of which they were only two. We just moved toward using these two eventually.
Music can be in a key firmly, can move between keys and you can spend hours discussing exactly when it was one key and when the new key takes over.
Music can be without key and still be hugely effective and emotional.

So I would not get hung up on things like keys and other such musical theory as required. It's all just a useful shorthand. So it can help communicate but all ways of getting over the music are totally valid if they work.

[Skub]

I would really like to know how so many experienced musicians manage to communicate with each other without knowing one of the basic concepts of music.

Maybe they do it with those things stuck on the side of yer bap...yanno..ears. The things that HEAR music and if you have a musical bent,allow you to join in? I think they may have been on the side of folk's head since way before someone decided to document a code for what you hear.

Just a thought. 

[CaliaMoko]

Like GuyBarry, I can't remember not knowing a certain amount of theory. I have a faint memory from my early childhood of being taught how to read the notes on the staff, but I don't actually remember not knowing them.

While it's true it's possible to write and perform music without knowing anything at all about theory, the reason thee details were documented was to make it easier for musicians to collaborate and communicate about their craft. If it didn't help, it wouldn't have caught on.

That being said, I think there's room for both schools of thought. For me, I need the help I get from the theory. I'm not "talented" enough to get along without it. And for people who've always used the theory and its documentation to write and communicate, it's difficult not to be able to use it.

For me, it's like reading and writing in general. It's certainly possible to learn stuff without books and being able to read, but it's definitely easier if one learns to read and write first and then uses that knowledge to further one's education. It could, however, all be done with movies and live story tellers and those people better at simply remembering stuff would do fine.

I need the books and I need the music theory. Even when I decide to learn a song someone on the forum has written (or not actually written down, as the case may be), I usually have to notate it and write out the chords for myself first.

[delb0y]

Do they not teach music theory in school anymore?  When I were a lad...

We had a very good music teacher, Mr Fenn, in junior school. At 8 I started learning the clarinet and I learned theory from then on. At secondary school Mr Williams was in charge of music and we fell out when I told him, at age 12, I wanted to leave the orchestra because I was giving up the clarinet in preference for guitar! But later on he was happy enough for me to play the guitar whenever a school play demanded it. But outside of the clarinet lessons everyone still had music lessons for the first three years (until we "picked our options").

As it happens I never really gave up the clarinet - I still have it under my desk here at home, and it's now supplemented by a tenor sax. I find it way easier to read music for those instruments than guitar - those six notes are much more difficult than a clarinet's one. Lord knows how pianists read ten notes simultaneously!

Derek

[pompeyjazz]

On all the collaborations that I've worked on the word "key" has never been mentioned yet we've still managed to communicate as musicians and even managed to complete some songs

[GuyBarry]

Well I think I'm going to part company with this forum.  It's like dealing with a lot of people who say they can write literature and don't know how to spell.  Utterly ridiculous.

[Viscount Cramer & His Orchestra]

I should think that writing literature without being able to spell would be quite possible. It's not the spelling of the words that's the important bit. You'd have to have a proofreader to write it up correctly but the ideas and thoughts, structure etc would be those of the creator.

[pompeyjazz]

That would be a shame Guy. All I was trying to say was that it's not necessary to have to have that knowledge to write a song

[The S]

Like someone said earlier, it's two schools, two ways to work and write. The beauty of it all, whatever school and background you come from, if it works for you...it works for you.

I hardly know any theory at all, it got me a long way anyways. I can see the benefits of knowing more but I haven't gotten 'round to it yet.

Key (pun intended) word here is to use your ears and listen. While any kind of theory will most certaintly help you along the way, listening is by far the most important factor and has been and is being done by musicians and songwriters without any kind of knowledge in music theory at all, and that is the main reason why so many get by without it.

I know the simpler chords, but I can't even tell you many of the chords I use in my own songs. I know how I play them but if I accidentally use, lets say a Gsus4 or a G11 or something like that I wouldn't know. I call them all a G. If you wanna know, I'd have to show you how I play it. That's where I'm at. Or you could listen and tell me what chords I use, that would be awesome to find out.  

At the end of the day, we've hopefully written some good tunes one way or the other.

Cheers,

Peter

[GuyBarry]

I'd just like to answer Skub's rather insulting suggestion that I don't listen to music.

I listen very attentively to music.  One of the ways I've learned to be a better writer is by listening to other people's songs.  A song will come on the radio and I'll go to the keyboard and try to work out the chords and play along.  I don't always get it right of course but I have a lot of fun learning about harmony in the process.  I'll think "Ooh!  They used a diminished seventh there", or an added sixth or whatever.  And then I think about how I might use something similar in one of my own songs.

This is what songwriting's all about to me.  It's about listening to what other people have come up with and using it to inform my own writing.  And I think you need a certain knowledge of theory to do that, but clearly I'm out of step with the "make it up as you go along" consensus that seems to have developed here.

All I can say is that I wish I'd been a songwriter in the 1930s.  I'd have made a killing.

[The S]

Oh and don't leave Guy, school us!!! 

[GuyBarry]

I'm going to ask another question.

Let's say you've written a song in C.  You've got a vocalist to perform that song, but it doesn't fit her (or his) range, so the vocalist wants to sing it in F.  What do you do?

For me it's straightforward.  I just transpose all the chords up a fourth, so that it suits the vocalist.

No idea what I'd do if I just regarded the harmony as a sequence of chords.  By doing that, you're saying that any given song can only be performed in one key.

I sing with a community choir.  We try out songs in all sorts of different keys until we find one that fits the range of the singers.  Is the concept of "transposition" completely unfamiliar here?