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?
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Traditionally the way that we came up with the musical notes was based on ratios between frequencies – for instance two different C notes one octave apart have an exact ratio of 2:1 between their frequencies.
It turns out there are other ratios of frequencies that our ears find pleasing, like a ratio of 3:2 (or at least very close to it,) and we call that a perfect fifth. If you play C and G together (in the same octave,) their frequencies have a 3:2 ratio and they sound nice together.
That’s essentially the concept of keys, it’s a bunch of notes with pleasing pitch ratios that sound nice together.
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