Not that I'm aware of. Kick it old school and use a piano.
Some good places to look are the first chord of the intro, first or last chord of the chorus, last chord of the song.
That's a massive generalization. Listen for the chord that sounds the most resolved.
Learn some ear skills...if you've got any musical aptitude it's not hard, and it will serve you well in the long term.
Teach a man to fish etc...
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Everyone's so clever, but I still have issues working out the key even if I wrote a song I did a solo on, so out of interest, I did this a few hours ago (and the piano piece in the middle is just a few bars thrown in out of time and rougher than ****, just as a memory marker for tomorrow), but can you tell me the key? It's a standard solo key I use all the time which I think is a blues key in A, but I have no idea what key the song is actually in. I think it would help the OP, and most ceratinly me, if anyone could tell me how the hell to work out the key from stuff I play all the time (oh no, maybe this shoulf have been put in the 'questions you were too afraid to ask' thread ... and this could just be C minor - but I don't know). Please don't be harsh on me and the OP, maybe we're musically dyslexic
Wave Editor "supposedly" does this in the Analyzer section...(pitch)...i think...
well, it says a key for the file, but i can't say it's right or wrong...never "used" this feature, i just know it's there... Audiofile Engineering - Wave Editor
*hmm...just checked a G maj chord and it told me it was in A...oh well... :(
Enough with the 'use your ears and learn scales' stuff - that wasn't what was the OP was asking about (and I didn't hear a request for smart answers either) - as for 'learn the major scales', A minor is the relative minor of C major, the Aeolian mode (so we're already outside of major scales while still being on the white notes) with the same notes isn't it? Without hijacking the OP's thread - as I intimated earlier - some of us just have problems with this stuff. Anything useful in terms of advice, if not software for the OP, would be welcome. Personally, I can play and jam stuff if I hear it or know the root, but as for definitively working out the key of stuff I write myself, I find it far harder than, for example, difficult time signatures or working out a solo - I'm fairly sure I can't be alone.
Many songs don't stay in one "key" but the root or tonic should be bloody obvious to anyone with half a musical ear. Otherwise, just work out all the chords, and find out what key they fit. If that's not the same key as what the root chord appears to be, it's modal and you should be able to work that out too.
, but can you tell me the key? It's a standard solo key I use all the time which I think is a blues key in A, but I have no idea what key the song is actually in. I think it would help the OP, and most ceratinly me, if anyone could tell me how the hell to work out the key from stuff I play all the time (oh no, maybe this shoulf have been put in the 'questions you were too afraid to ask' thread ... and this could just be C minor - but I don't know).
That demo song of yours sounds like key of C minor blues. By the way, it reminds me of songs by Down to the Bone.
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, but as for definitively working out the key of stuff I write myself, I find it far harder than, for example, difficult time signatures or working out a solo - I'm fairly sure I can't be alone.
You're not alone. There are several famous musicians out there that get by just fine without knowing how to find the key signature of songs. It doesn't seem to be a prerequisite for making music. In any case, the good news is that determining keys is very easy to learn if you have the curiosity to do it.
If you can "work out a solo" that avoids notes that "clash" or can "figure out a solo" from a song, you already have 99% of the knowledge to determining the key of the song. Solving the key of the song is simply finding the "named pattern" that fits the unnamed patterns you see in the music. It's like solving a crossword puzzle with a few missing letters but it's easier than crossword puzzles.
The basic chord structure "pattern" for western music is:
1 Major, 2 minor, 3 minor, 4 Major, 5 Major, 6 minor, 7 dim
Since there are 12 notes in scale, the pattern you see above has 12 versions. (Some would expand it and say there are 24 "patterns" or "keys" because of 12 Major plus 12 minor and some go farther and say 84 patterns because of 7 modal keys multiplied by 12. Just ignore all those extra combinations for now.) In terms if just figuring things out, you can simplify the "patterns" down to just 12. The other 12 or 72 are "relative" so it's not adding any new patterns for you to "fit" to your song.
In your song, you have a repeating motif of Bb Major to C minor. (Your chords use inversions for voicing which disguises things a little but that's easy to figure out too.)
Anyways, out of the 12 "patterns or keys", there are only 2 that have those 2 particular chords right next to each other.
One of them is key of Bb Major (or its relative G minor),
and the other is key of Eb Major (or its relative C minor).
Those are the 2 patterns you need to consider (the other 10 patterns (keys) you can ignore). One of them sounds more "correct" when overlayed on your song than the other... that's the C minor key. That's it, you've figured out the key of your song. A process of elimination to find the best pattern that fits the puzzle.
You also previously considered that it might be key of A. You can go to any website that lists the chords for key of A and you'll see it does not have Bb Major and C Minor within the 7 chords. It doesn't "fit" the pattern your music is playing.
That's the basics for most rock, pop, and straightforward jazz. The esoteric progressive fusion genres with wacky key changes, or jazz with atonal or ambiguous keys requires more advanced analysis.
Enough with the 'use your ears and learn scales' stuff - that wasn't what was the OP was asking about (and I didn't hear a request for smart answers either) - as for 'learn the major scales', A minor is the relative minor of C major, the Aeolian mode (so we're already outside of major scales while still being on the white notes) with the same notes isn't it? Without hijacking the OP's thread - as I intimated earlier - some of us just have problems with this stuff. Anything useful in terms of advice, if not software for the OP, would be welcome. Personally, I can play and jam stuff if I hear it or know the root, but as for definitively working out the key of stuff I write myself, I find it far harder than, for example, difficult time signatures or working out a solo - I'm fairly sure I can't be alone.
I don't agree, A aeolian is the sixth mode of C major. So for most intents and purposes, still C major. Yes, it becomes slightly more tricky with the other minor scales, but thinking about the major scales will take you a long way. Add the subdominant and dominant of the relative minors and you should be fine.
That demo song of yours sounds like key of C minor blues. By the way, it reminds me of songs by Down to the Bone.
You're not alone. There are several famous musicians out there that get by just fine without knowing how to find the key signature of songs. It doesn't seem to be a prerequisite for making music. In any case, the good news is that determining keys is very easy to learn if you have the curiosity to do it.
If you can "work out a solo" that avoids notes that "clash" or can "figure out a solo" from a song, you already have 99% of the knowledge to determining the key of the song. Solving the key of the song is simply finding the "named pattern" that fits the unnamed patterns you see in the music. It's like solving a crossword puzzle with a few missing letters but it's easier than crossword puzzles.
The basic chord structure "pattern" for western music is:
1 Major, 2 minor, 3 minor, 4 Major, 5 Major, 6 minor, 7 dim
Since there are 12 notes in scale, the pattern you see above has 12 versions. (Some would expand it and say there are 24 "patterns" or "keys" because of 12 Major plus 12 minor and some go farther and say 84 patterns because of 7 modal keys multiplied by 12. Just ignore all those extra combinations for now.) In terms if just figuring things out, you can simplify the "patterns" down to just 12. The other 12 or 72 are "relative" so it's not adding any new patterns for you to "fit" to your song.
In your song, you have a repeating motif of Bb Major to C minor. (Your chords use inversions for voicing which disguises things a little but that's easy to figure out too.)
Anyways, out of the 12 "patterns or keys", there are only 2 that have those 2 particular chords right next to each other.
One of them is key of Bb Major (or its relative G minor),
and the other is key of Eb Major (or its relative C minor).
Those are the 2 patterns you need to consider (the other 10 patterns (keys) you can ignore). One of them sounds more "correct" when overlayed on your song that the other... that's the C minor key. That's it, you've figured out the key of your song. A process of elimination to find the best pattern that fits the puzzle.
You also previously considered that it might be key of A. You can go to any website that lists the chords for key of A and you'll see it does not have Bb Major and C Minor within the 7 chords. It doesn't "fit" the pattern your music is playing.
That's the basics for most rock, pop, and straightforward jazz. The esoteric progressive fusion genres with wacky key changes, or jazz with atonal or ambiguous keys requires more advanced analysis.
Thanks for such an in depth and thoughtful reply - I'm going to re-read it a few times and then try to apply it! I was finally ossing up between b flat and C minor but couldn't work it out definitively. It's great to get useful stuff like this in GS - and thanks for the comment about Down to the Bone - listening to them on youtube now - this is right up my street listening wise and I've never heard them before. Cheers man. To OP - sorry for the slight hijack
Yeah, first determine the notes, use a spectrum analyser if necessary. Melodyne will even tell you chords. But so will something like Ableton's Spectrum.
I've done a tutorial on the 7 chords of a key thing here.
In Ableton Live I simplify it to the extreme:
The 7 chords of the key C major, and below, A minor's 7 chords.
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Everyone's so clever, but I still have issues working out the key even if I wrote a song I did a solo on, so out of interest, I did this a few hours ago (and the piano piece in the middle is just a few bars thrown in out of time and rougher than ****, just as a memory marker for tomorrow), but can you tell me the key?
The clever people aren't necessarily helpful. It's a good thread, I expect a lot of people have the same problem, I sometimes do, and my stuff is mostly very simple. I suggest making notes in your software or whatever if possible.
The clever people aren't necessarily helpful. It's a good thread, I expect a lot of people have the same problem, I sometimes do, and my stuff is mostly very simple. I suggest making notes in your software or whatever if possible.
Cheers man - I'm off to check your tutorial - thanks for taking the effort
Learn some ear skills...if you've got any musical aptitude it's not hard, and it will serve you well in the long term.
Teach a man to fish etc...
If you're a musician, this is just something you should develop. For most folks, it's not too hard. While many songs modulate within them to some extent, you can typically just plunk notes on a keyboard or guitar and hear whether or not they fit in the key. As a very general rule, 7 out of the 12 notes in a given octave will work. (But because of modulations in many works, generally slight variations in scale within a given key, some notes may work in some spots and not in others. And, of course, some works will modulate to an entirely different though perhaps related key.)
I've seen some software that could pick out probable chords in a recording, and it's amusing, but far from reliable. FWIW, I could probably do a better job when I'd been playing a couple years -- and I was terrible. (Not a quick learner, here; my parents and I were told by a couple different music teachers I had no musical talent whatsoever. But I fooled them. Sorta. )
EDIT: Just got done reading the other posts. Lots of good points; [CORRECTION:] Jason West's post is solid; haven't had a chance to look over kennyda's tutorial, but I think his example of 'harmonizing the scale' above is a great starting place for those who don't fully grasp theory.
It parallels the super basic lesson a kind friend of mine gave me when I was struggling to find my way as a guitarist. I knew a bunch of chords that I could slap together in various combinations and I enjoyed trying to pick out solos -- but I had no knowledge system tying any of it together, so I was always stumbling in the dark.
My pal sat me down at a piano and showed me how the basic triads work in C (which is the same way they work in any other key, of course, only starting in a different place, on a different root note) and then he confirmed a 'big breakthrough' that I'd been intuiting on my own -- that the notes you could play in a melodic solo seemed, somehow, to be related to the chords you were playing over and that all that seemed to flow out of the scale. That's how far I had to come...
Thanks for such an in depth and thoughtful reply - I'm going to re-read it a few times and then try to apply it! I was finally ossing up between b flat and C minor but couldn't work it out definitively.
Yes, the advice of "use your ears" does sound snobbish and pointless but there's actually a good deal of truth to it. To bring that advice down to earth, I wanted to emphasize that people already have 99% of the capabilities. The activity of listening and picking out the notes on the guitar or keyboard is the hard part (which you already said you've done.) The last step of fitting the "key pattern" to the particular notes you've already found is really a trivial step.
There's some merit in having software that (attempts to) automatically analyzes songs to determine the key sig. I could see this being useful for batch mode. E.g. you have a harddrive of 100,000 songs and you need software with artificial intelligence to guess the beats-per-minute, the key sig, etc for the entire library. However, determining the key sig is based on probabilities with various confidence levels. Your rudimentary abilities with just your ears can analyze music that would confuse the software scanners.
Lots of songs change keys like Steve Wonder's "I Just Called to Say I Love You", Bon Jovi "Livin on a Prayer", Toni Braxton "Unbreak My Heart" ... software will get confused with material like that but humans won't. Other songs are "in between" standard pitches such as Eric Clapton "Layla" which will also trip up software. Again these are trivial things for the human ear to figure out.
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and thanks for the comment about Down to the Bone - listening to them on youtube now - this is right up my street listening wise and I've never heard them before.
Down to the Bone's "Staten Island Groove" was on heavy rotation on jazz station during the 1990s. Another tune from that time period you might like is Heavyshift "90 degrees in the Shade."
I think one thing that can be vexing are when modal shifts and modulations change the scale slightly. Sometimes it's easy to 'see' coming (like in the blues where the forms are intended to be rooted in or play off the familiar), sometimes it's a chorus or a bridge -- but sometimes it's just a few chords that pull you into another scale for a few bars.
I know it took me a while to suss that stuff intellectually -- but as far as playing went, really, I had to just sort of develop my ear, as my intellectual grasp has typically lagged even my meager playing ability.
I'm sure the OP has already tried using his ears. Not everyone can easily define pitch, much less the key of a song, so instead of shooting too high with music theory, or too low with "use your ears," how about real advice?
Is there an OSX app that can easily define pitch? From there, a certain bit of homework would be necessary to define the key.
I would never trust such tools:
* A lot of contemporary techno is very atonal
* Clever arrangements where the initial key might not be the base key
* The algorithm's idea of the base key might be not the one I think of as the base key
I.e. I would end up double-checking the results where hitting a key on a keyboard and typing it in would be faster.
I think one thing that can be vexing are when modal shifts and modulations change the scale slightly. Sometimes it's easy to 'see' coming (like in the blues where the forms are intended to be rooted in or play off the familiar), sometimes it's a chorus or a bridge -- but sometimes it's just a few chords that pull you into another scale for a few bars.
I know it took me a while to suss that stuff intellectually -- but as far as playing went, really, I had to just sort of develop my ear, as my intellectual grasp has typically lagged even my meager playing ability.
Yes, there's definitely an 'intellectual leap' I'm still lacking! A few weeks ago I was doing a gig with a band I'd only been playing with for 5 weeks and we had to soundcheck in front of the audience, so we ended up a song down later. At the end of the gig it was going great so the guitarist started playing a Tracy chapman blues thing that the vocalist knew the lyrics to - I'd never heard it before, but knew it was blues in F sharp and we just jammed it out and it went down a storm. No problem (somehow), but still grasping a scale for any given song is something I've got to work on (it's useful in Logic because I like to use Apple loops as inspiration for brass and stuff when sketching out a song and you have to tell logic what key you're in so the loops are in key - something that always seems to loose me in the same way that PWM confuses me on synths and some people have a problem temporarily remembering left from right), but given the genuinely helpful posts on here as a starting point, I'm going to do my homework. Thanks guys.
Good ol' blues. Even if you hate the form, its influence is so deeply ingrained in 20th Century pop that most of us have what almost seems an innate/gut understanding and expectations. (I do recognize that it's now the 21st C. Sometimes I wish more people seemed to. )
One thing I did was simply 'jamming' to recorded music a lot. (This was before the pre-digital period of widespread accessibility to standardized tuners and locked down recording speeds, so I found myself getting better at quick guitar tuning adjustments, too. Always handy.)
I'd pick out single note solos (at first -- and you can do that on piano just like guitar) and -- when I'd inevitably hit a bad note not comfortably in the key, I'd try to figure out how to 're-contextualize' that after the fact with my next note. (It's a habit I picked up from listening to Jimi Hendrix and continually saying to myself, Hey, that note doesn't sound like it's in this key! but then the next few notes he would find a way of making it all work somehow. (Usually. )
Honestly, over the years, I've often not bothered to figure out what key different songs were in until I either had to tell someone what key I thought it was in or sat down to play an accompaniment part...
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That's how far I had to come... 
