What key is this song in? (beginner's question)

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by andydufresne

...The chords are pretty easy - D Am C G throughout the song, verse and chorus alike. My question is, is it in the key of D or the key of G?

Hi Andy...
My answer is ''Yes, it is probably in G - or D'' Does it change the way you will play it if it is 'proven' beyond a shadow of a doubt to be one key or the other?

My gigging partner and I discuss these types of songs with flexible 'keys' all the time. He thinks of this particular song as in G (V-ii⁷-IV-I) and plays it accordingly. I hear it in D (I-v⁷-♭VII-IV) and harmonize it as such.

Norwegian Wood, G-L-O-R-I-A, Sweet Home Alabama - all similar.

The scores for Revelation I've seen are in key of D, which tells me that's probably the way Jenny Lee Riddle wrote it. Self-styled lyric sheets vary (only applicable in cases where one needs to auto-transpose on a site that lists/associates the key)

I tend to think the person that writes the song gets to choose what they call the key, whether we like their interpretation of it, or not. And if they don't have a degree in music, it may not match up with my my musical analysis or interpretation…and it still doesn't matter.

My thought is "It really doesn't matter". It may affect a leading tone or two, but that adds interest to the piece, and gives me harmonizing options.

I think in major scales and my giggin' partner in minor scales. So when a song has 1 #, I think and play in G when he's thinking/playing in Em - and we work just fine together.

He learned his pentatonic scales from the minor perspective and it's influenced everything he hears and thinks since. I learned scales from the major perspective on accordion, and it's influenced everything I've done since.

We still make great music together and agreed not to argue about apparent key signatures.

[mr. beaumont]

lj's first sentence is pretty darn important^^^^


Truth is, tell me it's in D, or G, If I'm called upon to improvise a solo over this one, I'm not playing scale licks from D major OR G major...

[Hotspur]

You don't figure out what key a song is in by analyzing the chord progression.

You do it by listening for the resolution.

Sometimes it helps to play the melody line on your guitar.

The main melody line is pretty clearly in G here. Like someone else, I hear it getting a little ambiguous near the end - but that may, in fact, be a transposition to D, or just reliance on a lot of D chords to force the resolution elsewhere at the end.

(That's actually not that uncommon a trick. I have a song where it's in C, which a very simple C-G-C chord progression, until the bridge ... and when we come back from the bridge it's the same C-G-C chord progression but now the melody is in G).

[JonPR]

Just to echo the above posts, which are making a couple of points:

1. Identifying the key is a matter of listening, not analysing chords (and not looking at key signatures - key signatures don't specify key, only pitch collection).

2. Why do you need to know the key anyway? If it's a matter of knowing how to improvise on the song, then everything you need is there in the melody and chords. They spell out all the notes in question. There's no need to give the thing a label.
If you know how to form those chord shapes, you don't even have to know the note names! You improvise off the chords. (You don't need scale patterns if you know enough chord shapes.)

IOW, like lj says, it doesn't matter what key SHA is in. Everyone agrees on the pitch collection. In alphabetical order, that's A B C D E F# G (with some occasional flattening of the F#, at least in the vocal).
So those are the notes you use to improvise on it. Choose your own keynote if you want, but it all works within the given chords - you need to know those, but you do, right?
Likewise, in this song, the chords contain all the notes you need. You don't need to name the scale they spell out.
(If you ever find a song where the chords - and the melody - don't spell out an entire scale, well then, you're at liberty to fill in any other notes you like.)

[bishopdm]

Interesting discussion. The melody certainly points toward D as the "tonic," to my ears (descending motion from F# through E to D, with a leap up to A from the F#), even with the C natural. A very popular Vatican 2 sound!

[andydufresne]

I don't need to know the key, I just want to. Ever since I've started playing, I wanted to know why melodies, chords and keys work the way they do and I still have holes to plug in my knowledge. I feel that knowing what I play makes it easier.
Anyway, in a band context, I still think everyone needs to agree on the key; if not, the guitar might want to resolve the song on a G chord and the keyboard on a D and I'm not sure it would sound pretty.