i vaguely know that a key is a set of notes but do they always have to sound good together? who created these keys and what criteria do a set of notes have to have to be considered a key?
In: 3
There’s a “devil’s interval” between the 4th and the 7th (in the key of C these are F and B) which don’t sound very pleasing. But “suspense” is just as important as “light” in music, so “sound good together” depends on the context. Check out the opening riff
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lVdMbUx1_k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lVdMbUx1_k)
There’s a pattern for working out a major key, in terms of *tones* and *semitones,* which goes:
T T S T T T S
A *tone* is 2 frets on a guitar or 2 adjacent keys on a piano, and a *semitone* is one fret or key. So if we want to know the notes in the key of C major, we start on the C and follow the pattern.
The other common key is *minor*, and the pattern for that is T S T T S T T
|Note|Major|Minor|
|:-|:-|:-|
|C|1st (root)|1st (root)|
|C# / Db|||
|D|2nd|2nd|
|D# / Eb||3rd|
|E|3rd||
|F|4th|4th|
|F# / Gb|||
|G|5th|5th|
|G# / Ab||6th|
|A|6th||
|A# / Bb||7th|
|B|7th||
If you work out the notes in A minor, you’ll see that they, like C major, are all white notes. The ancient Greeks had a “mode” using “all white notes” for every starting note:
C Ionian (what we call the Major key)
D Dorian
E Phrygian
F Lydian
G Mixolydian
A Aeolian (our minor key)
B Locrian
===
So we’ve defined an octave, split it into 11, and used 7 of those in a scale. We also know that the 4 and the 7 are , well, a bit dodgy, so we leave those out and just have 5, or pentatonic, scale, and that seems to be hardwired into us:
Latest Answers