Another question

[blackbird]

Here's another question (I'm on a roll this week!). Yeah, I know it's getting irritating... Anyway, I'm looking at the Cyberfret lesson regarding open position major scales, and, well I just don't see the point. I mean, what are they telling me when they say a piece of music is played "in the key of" C major? All the scales use more or less the same notes, don't they? (Other than the progressively increasing number of #'s as we progress through the scales.) Could someone please explain, or refer me to a site that does? Thanks.

[mjamer]

Honestly you'll never be irritating.. I'd be more irritated if you ended your pursuit of knowledge and understanding =). I'm in no way qualified to answer this question, but I will explain it the way I "get it" and if I'm wrong we'll both learn something =).


When a song is in a different key that's where the notes
stop and start, like if it's in C you have C D E F G A B, from
that scale you know you have the following chords:

Cmaj, Dmin, Emin, Fmaj, Gmaj, Amin, and Bdim

Technically you can play any of these chords (or if you're reading sheet music, or merely know a song is in a particular key, you can expect these chords). If the key was in G, yes we've only changed one note (the F to F#) but we've also started out with G instead of C, and our scale is G A B C D E F#, we've also changed what chords we can use:

Gmaj, Amin, Bmin, Cmaj, Dmaj, Emin and F#dim

and so on and so forth for the different keys that songs can be in.

hopefully this helps and I'm not too far out in left field hehe.

mjamer

[blackbird]

Thanks mjamer for both the reassurance and the reply. They're both very appreciated :) ! What you write makes sense to me, and now I kind of "get it" too! One question though. You write that one of the reasons that chords are differ with varying keys is that the keys start and end with different notes. I wrote out the possible chords for two different keys, and I ended up with the same possible set of chords, except for variations where the actual notes were different (i.e. F sharp instead of F). So, the starting (and ending) note of a key doesn't really have any effect, right? It's just the variation of the actual notes in the key that has the effect, no? (Is this even making sense?) Another question. Hypothetically speaking, if I had a piece of simple music (i.e. fingerpicking, not chords) that was in the "key of C", does this mean the music can't have any sharps or flats, because those aren't in the scale of C?
Thanks again for the reply!

[adenine!]

Pretty much, the only reason you need to know the starting/ending note is to know which notes are in the key :) If you had a song in the key of C, it doesn't mean that you can't have any sharps or flats, but you probably won't find any because it will usually sound like a wrong note. Notes that aren't in the key are called accidentals. When you're reading standard notation music (not tab), if you see a sharp, flat, or natural symbol in front of the note, it means that note is an accidental, unless it is negating a former accidental in the measure, let me explain that ;) Say you have a measure, the first note in the measure is a G with a flat symbol in front of it. If you see another G in that measure, that note is also supposed to be played as Gb, even if there is no flat symbol in front of it, unless it has a natural symbol in front of it. In a measure after that, if you see a G with no flat symbol in front of it, it is played as a normal G. Confused yet? ;) It would be easier if you could see some music as an example, I'll look around for something. If you have any more questions I should be here for a bit.

[adenine!]

This page (http://www.cyberfret.com/reading/flats/standard/) has a good explanation and an example.

[blackbird]

Makes a lot of sense... Thanks Adenine!