Major Scales VS. Minor Scales

[deggy]

Do you find that the different keys have different moods?

Like, does Eb Major mean anything different to you than F Major?

TB

yes, some tunes i hear in my head dont sound right if i transpose them. Keys sound quite different to each other.

The keys I can sing in are not always the ones I compose in. I use my singing keys because of the restriction of my voice, but instrumentally I compose in a key that is triggered by the inspiration.

Messiaen also talked about this as well. There are famous pieces (Scriabin's Prométhée, poème de feu comes to mind) that often highlight different colors that the composers associated with each key...

i'm sure people have talked about this type of synesthesia a ton here at kvr already though...

[hibidy]

Yep,

to my ears there are some significant diff's between certain key sigs......

Just as an example, I'ts hard not to do major songs in G, It's an extreamly happy sounding key. Ab, not so much.

Eb minor is the best sounding key for allot of people, E is "easier" to play....but there is a certain sadness or dramatic effect that Eb gives.....

Of cours, it's really subjective.....

[Sascha Franck]

yes, some tunes i hear in my head dont sound right if i transpose them. Keys sound quite different to each other.

There's several reasons for such things to happen.

- One may have something I'd call "perfect pitch for starters". This means that, while not being able to actually point out a certain pitch/note immediately, different keys/tonalities would still reveal a different "feel".

- One may have a certain instrumental background which would make some keys more familiar to you. The obvious examples: White keys on the piano. All black keys on the piano. Open chords on a guitar. When you're a guitar player, a key such as, say, G major usually is quite more familiar than, say, Bb minor. And apparently, with most people the hearing adjusts to that, at least a bit.

- One may have a strong classical background. In classical music, keys don't seem to be treated as "equal" as in modern music, where you just pitch things around as much as you like (such as in simply tuning your guitar to Eb). Might have something to do with the pre-equal-tempered times. Back then some keys simply wouldn't work.

- There's the "low interval limits". I don't have any concrete numbers at hand, but you can only go that low with, say, a minor third interval. As an example (just randomly picked), an interval such as A-C might still work fine whereas transposing it down a halfstep to G#-B would already start to sound undefined.

I guess for most of us it's a mixture of some of these things, making certain keys sound "special".
Personally, when I'm away from the guitar, I don't experience these things a lot. In short: You could just transpose a keyboard a halftone down or up and most likely I wouldn't notice. I seem to be completely free from anything remotely close to absolute pitch, even if I have a rather well-trained relative pitch. Sometimes it's a bit different, for instance, when looking at a guitar, I may just know what the open strings will sound like, once I strum them. But usually this isn't the case for me.

In the end, while I'm sometimes quite jealous about some of my music mates to have perfect pitch, I never found it to be a problem, in my practical experience I even found it to be an advance. For instance, some years back we had to do a slightly longer tour with a rockband (no keyboards involved) and the singer's got quite some problems with his voice after a few days, constantly pushing it to it's upper limits. So we just tuned all guitars and basses down a half-step and things went a lot easier for him. I didn't notice much of a difference, others than things probably sounding a bit fatter.

[Timerider]

Chopin loved his minor keys - "I'm happiest, when i'm sad"