Finding keys by ear

[Kirby161]

My friend plays guitar (as i once did) and we like to jam. however, when he plays some chords i dont know, or he is playing in a key that screws with my head, i cant figure out which one he is playing. I know my scales pretty well, and i can play in any key that i need to, but i cant catch what key we are playing in unless its blatently obvious.

Any tips on how to find the key of a song when you dont know what it is (or have never even heard the song)?
Any help helps
Kirby

[August Watters]

How about this:

in listening to the melody, try to identify the last note of a chorus. It's almost always the root of the key.

August W

[Oren]

Well, my usual strategy is to yell, "What the h*** key are your playin' in?" And that's the truth. What I really hate is if I'm playing bass with a dance band, and the others start a tune without telling me the key. Really sounds bad when the bass is fumbling around trying to find the key.

For finding chords in an unfamiliar key or for a tune I don't know, experience has been my best teacher. After embarrassing myself quite a few times, I started to learn chord relationships in most keys. For instance, if I can find the VI chord in a key, I can usually find the chords that follow.

However, there are some tunes for which I just have to either ask the chords, or look them up somewhere and practice. "Rosetta" is a good example: in the key of F, the second chord is a C augmented, if I remember right. I'd probably never find that one on my own.

Keep playing and your ear keeps developing. Heck, I'm so old that I don't even qualify as a baby boomer, but my ear keeps hearing new things--that is, those things were always there, but I couldn't hear them until my ear was developed.

Maybe once I retire, I'll have enough time to listen with both ears.

Oren #http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif

[Kirby161]

actually oren that has been my stratagy for a long time and recently my good friend the guitarist says "hell, i dont know" and just plays what he thinks sounds good; nothing is worse that a jam on "teardrops in heaven" by eric clapton while there is a mandolin player fumbling around for the key in every way he knows.
I like the stratagy of the last note in the chorus, that is working out fine right now but again, any other stratageys help.

[duuuude]

Tears In Heaven starts with an Am. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/cool.gif

[Scotti Adams]

..I hate to say it..but pitch is something you are born with..some people have it..some people dont..some people have it more than others....sad but its true...its not a bad thing...just unhandy somtimes http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif Ive heard stories of some players such as Roy Husky Jr would walk into a room and tell you what key it was in....no joke....each key/chord has a color to hear some people tell it.

[Dfyngravity]

Actually thats exactly true. My friend has perfect pitch. Which means he can tell you what note you played and if you play and wrong notes in a key. It is absolutly insane because somedays we will be practicing and he will stop and tell you when you play a wrong note. I have relative pitch which means I can tell you with in a half step or less what note you just played. And thats just by listing and playing for a while. You can develope relative pitch if you are always listeing to what you are playing and associating it with a key and notes.

[withak]

The easiest (and least annoying for everyone else) way I've found is to 'feel around' quietly for the bass pattern.

[John Flynn]

I agree about just asking as the #1 method. Also knowing all your guitar chords and variaions visually can really help.

I also agree that pitch may be a natural talent. However, I think most people have it, but most don't realize it. If you can tell that someone else is singing off key, you have the basic talent. The more common challenge is believing in your own abilities and then really listening to the music and givng yourself permission to make decisions about what sounds right and what does not. When you first start to do this, you may not make all the right decisions. With practice, you get better. I think too many people just say, "I don't have the talent to recognize what's in key and what's not" and so they don't try and they don't get good at it.

Here is a trick that has served me well when I can't ask what the key is: #When the music is playing, will play quietly, just loud enough that I can hear. I run quickly #up and down the scales of keys I suspect. The scale of the correct key will generally sound OK with what is being played. Other scales will have at least one or two notes that sound sour. Then I will validate that by starting to fit in chords from that scale. I can generally nail a key within a few phrases of the music and be playing all the chords and/or improvising a break reasonably well by the end of the first verse. Sometimes, but not always, I can nail the melody within the first couple of verses. It depends on the tune. BTW, I think I have just average pitch. I just keep working at it.

[Ken Sager]

If you don't know the key of a tune:
1) Ask
2) Listen, watch & learn to follow somebody who knows
3) Don't play it. It's rare that when "feeling around quietly" for a key that you're not heard by those around you. If you can hear your own instrument then somebody sitting in front of the soundboard can hear it too. It's OK to not play if you don't know a tune, then ask once it's over. Next time you'll know.

A lesson every guy needs to learn: It's OK to stop and ask for directions every now and then. It sure beats driving a hundred miles up the wrong tune and irking everybody in the car with you...

Just my opinion and worth absolutely nothing.

Joy to all,
Ken

[August Watters]

"..I hate to say it..but pitch is something you are born with..some people have it..some people dont..some people have it more than "

Since I teach ear training for a living, I should weigh in here -- I believe the above is a common misconception -- of course we're all born with different levels of aptitude, but ALL of us are able to learn, given the right method. Yes, some people are born with perfect pitch -- but some learn it along the way. Most of us (myself included) have relative pitch, meaning we can identify pitches relative to a key center, but can't identify a note by name.

To illustrate the "learnability" of perfect pitch, think about this: are there some familiar notes on your instrument you have memorized? Many guitar players have memorized the sound of the low E -- so they can find it, sing it back, even without guitar in hand. I'll bet many of us have memorized the high E of the mandolin, and can tell if it's a half-step high or low by the texture. That's a rudimentary form of perfect pitch! To learn the other pitches, you'd memorize their textures as well, by comparing them to the ones you already know.

A colleague who has been doing this much longer than I says that in more than 25 years here at Berklee College, he's never encountered a student who couldn't learn to improve their sense of relative pitch. We see students with very low pitch recognition skills, but an organized methodology (and a lot of willingness on their part to learn) can work wonders with any student.

August Watters
http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/mandosmiley.gif

[duuuude]

August, that's exactly what my mother-in-law, who is a professional pianist and has perfect pitch, has told me. Just compare the unknown notes to ones you know in order to learn how to zero in on them.
http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/cool.gif

[Scotti Adams]

..Good point August..I agree for the most part..but I still believe that for the most part it is something you are born with...to some people it comes easier that it does to others. Its just like playing an instrument...being an instructer myself, I know who is going to make a player and who is going to have such a hard time at learning that they will evetually grow frustrated and quit. I am..and I say this as humble as can be said...one of the lucky ones who have been "born" with a good sense of pitch and I dont get frustrated with it. I really do feel for those who have to fight it....I used to have a student with whom no matter how hard he and I tried just didnt get it and he soon realized he wasnt going to get it....he was smart enough to start spending his hard earned cash on something else.....now hes a fine bowler.. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[mando bandage]

Maybe you're trying to be too precise. One of my favorite lines from Oh Brother, Where Art Thou is when one of the Soggy Bottom Boys calls the tune "In the Jailhouse Now", as he put it, "in the neighborhood of B."

R http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/rock.gif

[Scotti Adams]

..now thats a tight spot.. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif

[Lee]

Very interesting August. When I was a kid sitting at the dinner table with the family, Dad would run out to the piano and hit one note and tells us to remember the sound of it. The next night he'd run out there and play a variety of notes and ask my brother, sister and me if we could tell him which one was from the night before. Out of the three kids there's no doubt I was woefully worse than the others. I have no doubt that some people have more innate ability to hear perfect pitch.
Oddly though, I can get my mandolin A string pretty darn close unaided; within a 1/4 step. I attribute this more to learning the sound of an A-440 when played on a mandolin, and also an unconscious touchy-feely thing for sensing when the string is at the correct tension. However, I wouldn't define these "tricks" as improving my innate sense of perfect pitch.
Relative pitch is another matter which I know can be improved. I was weened on violin for many years. As an adult, I'm now an aural piano tuner (but not a player). My sense of relative pitch is excellent. If two A-440 strings are beating as little as 1/2 beats per second I know which one is flat or sharp. In contrast, I notice other tuners will arbitrarily adjust one string in any direction then listen if the beats decrease or increase to know if they've headed in the correct direction or not. My tuning efficiency is increased by eliminating lost motion, so I've purposefully perfected my sense of relative pitch so I can head off in the correct direction without using the trial and error method. So I'm inclined to believe that relative pitch can be developed much more than perfect pitch.
One particular problem I have is listening to someone explain his/her method of tuning a temperment. This is because my ear doesn't immediately pick up on the two notes being played as forming a particular interval. Since violin players don't play double-stops or chords until they're relatively advanced my ear was not trained to listen to intervals. Over my years of tuning I have learned to distinquish intervals, but I am still no closer to visualizing which keys are being depressed when the keyboard is not within eyesight. Therefore I am sure that interval training will yield good results, but I'm still very skeptical that a persons sense of perfect pitch can be significantly improved upon through training.
But it sure would be nice!! I'm open to suggestions.