Where to Begin - What's a Key Signature?

It's Chris with Implied Music. Where to begin? Well, today I want to talk about key signatures. What's a key signature? It's something you hear talked about a lot. If you're a musician, you're definitely going to have a conversation one day that goes something like, can you do this in a different key? Keys and key signatures have been around for a long time. We're going to talk about what they look like. You may well have an idea what they are. Key and key signature relates to scale. By the end of this video, I'm hoping that you'll have a deeper understanding of the difference between a scale and a key. Well, I've talked about this topic before. The idea of key and key signature and the way it relates to scales and modes is a pretty lively idea for me because they're really not the same. I'm very interested in the physical experience of playing or singing and how it lies in the voice or in the hands or on your instrument. I think of that as a terrain and the terrain of a scale is defined by kind of like the bits, the bumpy bits on the keyboard or the shape that you're playing on guitar or how it feels in your voice. Terrain is a really important idea for me. My previous video, which I will link to, goes into that in great detail. Today, I want to begin to look at the idea of key signature. Let's do a quick review and then kind of move forward talking about key signature. We've said this before, but every major scale is a collection of whole and half steps. As it happens, if I play that collection of whole and half steps on a piano keyboard, it'll be all the white keys. Whole, whole, half. Whole, whole, whole, half. Now, there's a nice sort of useful general rule in the 15 major scales that we use in Western classical music, which can be expressed this way. You can only have one of every letter name. The letter names that we have in music are A, B, C, D, E, F, G. In Germany, they also use H just to make the world a little weirder. But that means that we've got to figure out a way to express, or we say spell, a scale that begins on a note that's, say, different from C and you come to a black key, something like that. We actually use a little trick, which is actually fairly easy to show using a wheel, which we call the circle of fifths. The circle of fifths looks like this, and you've doubtless seen something like this before. Around the outside is a notational device that we call a key signature. I'll show you how and why it looks like it does and how it works for us. Here in the key of C, I can play all white notes. In other words, all unaltered letter names to get a major scale. And that gives me a whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step pattern. It's quite nice. Now, as I go around the circle of fifths, I'll have to raise one and then another, two are now raised, and then a third, three are now raised notes in order to get that pattern. So going from C to G, I'll need an F sharp. The F will always have to be sharp. So whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, between E and F sharp is a whole step, and I need it. To make a major scale starting on G, I will always have to have an F sharp. And that means that the important diatonic chords in Western classical theory that I associate with a major scale will always come out the way I expect them. I'll be able to play harmonic patterns that worked in one key, in the key of G, because the framework is the same. As I go around the circle of fifths, I continue adding sharps. And this pattern that you see here will always be consistent. You can rely on it once you learn it. As I continue around the circle, I get to the bottom, the six o'clock position, and now I have close to a maximal, actually it's not the maximal number of sharps and flats because you're seeing here six sharps or six flats. And my computer is spelling things with a combination of sharps and flats, and I have to say it's really confusing visually, but just look at all those black notes, that's a B natural, C sharp, although it says D flat, D sharp, although it says E flat, and that's by the way, I have to say it, an E sharp, not an F, and there's an F sharp. And that's an F sharp, right? So what's that? It's an E sharp. Why? Because there's a rule, one of every letter. That's an F sharp major scale, but it's also, and that's what this means, a G flat major scale, and now as I continue around, I'm going to continue to lift notes up by a bit, so I have one less flat, five flats, four flats, three. You can memorize these, and I actually recommend that you do. This is a convention that rises out of the European classical tradition, and it really only works with tuning systems that split the octave in 12 equal bits, and it's really only useful for harmonic systems that use conventional harmonic practices. I'll show you what I mean. Let's say I have a chord progression that I like. It goes C, G, A minor, and then F. Well, that's a great chord progression, and it sounds good in the key of C. Now, if I want to move that entire progression somewhere else, I can think of it in a number of ways, but a really important way to think of it is as a series of numbers. I can think of it this way. One, the chord on the first step of the scale. Five, the chord on the fifth step of the scale. Six, the chord on the sixth step of the scale. Four. Now, your singer says, I can't sing in the key of C. It's just too high. Can you play it down in A? And you say, yeah, sure. So you go A, E, and it's not sounding right. And it's not sounding right because you haven't made the key adjustment. The key signature adjustment is to adjust every note to that new pattern. And so when you know your keys, you'll know that in this case, the A has to be major. The one chord is major. A major, E major, F sharp minor, D. That's a one major, five major, six minor, four major. Exactly the same formula that existed in C major. Key signatures are a map to the formula of the major scale and the chords, the diatonic chords that go along with it. It's absolutely crucial to understanding how, from the early part of the Baroque period, well through the end of the Classical period, all American popular songs, probably up till this day, rely on this idea of a central key whose gravity, the sort of tonicity of the central key, provides a kind of a stable location in which we push and pull. Not all music has to be made that way, though. There are lots of scales. Now, the idea of a scale is a much broader notion. And I sort of promised at least to touch on it today. And so I want to just talk briefly about it. So a scale is a collection of notes. There's a scale, and it's the scale that I started with, isn't it? It says C Ionian there. It's a C major scale. But I can alter that and get a different world. For instance, I could do this. And I mean, what is it? Is it a key signature? It is not. However, there's only kind of, I don't know, I'm missing a note. Let's see, which one should I put in? There we go. I like that. That's a lot. So I have now one of every note. I have C, D sharp, E, F sharp, G, A flat, B flat. And then the whole thing starts again. It is a scale, a scale that has terrain, a scale that has shape and integrity. Key signatures are a shorthand roadmap to the conventions of European classical music and conventions that really apply to us if we're writing songs as well. And yet they're a narrow window into a much wider world. If you're interested in exploring the wider world, then your next step is maybe you watch the earlier video I linked to it earlier, where I talk about key signature and scale, and then maybe start exploring modes. I've talked about the Dorian mode quite recently, as well as the minor scales that are associated with the majors. And then past the Dorian mode, there's scales that are built off other steps of the scale, the third, fourth, and fifth, six steps of the major scale. Scales, modes, built off the steps of the ascending melodic minor, where you get these gorgeous runs of whole steps. And then a whole list of other possibilities of fractional scales that only use five notes or four. The idea of scales is a broader notion that might apply more effectively to music that you'd be interested in making. In the meantime, subscribe to the channel. We'll be talking more about this in the future. And if you ding the bell, you'll be notified when I do my videos. I'll see you next time.