# Can you identify key signature without being told?



## Marx (Dec 23, 2013)

Are you able to listen to say a Bach Cantata and figure out the key almost instantaneously? Are some people better at this than others? Would the masters adorned this skill from birth? I imagine Vivaldi had the innate proclivity to identity a particular key signature within seconds of a piece being played. Did he have to practise this skill?


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

Some are easy to identify. D minor stand firmly on the podium here - I believe even non-musicians who are only experienced listeners can detect when the piece is written in this key. Other keys with few or no accidentals (C major, E minor) are only slightly more difficult to sense. It depends on the work, too: a baroque/classical piece stands in the key much more firmly and transparently than music using more advanced harmony and modulations.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

If I have access to a keyboard, I can recall the piece in the correct key with very high accuracy. I have at times also been able to identify the key of a work hearing it on the radio (a Haydn symphony in D that opened in D minor comes to mind).


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

Beethoven claimed to be able to distinguish between music in C-sharp and D-flat.


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Mahlerian said:


> If I have access to a keyboard, I can recall the piece in the correct key with very high accuracy. I have at times also been able to identify the key of a work hearing it on the radio (a Haydn symphony in D that opened in D minor comes to mind).


Yes, same here.

I can recognize D flat major almost instantaneously (its color is what a recognize), but other keys come a tad slower. It usually takes me a second or 2 to tune my ear to the key, and I'm almost always correct. Sometimes I go way off though. I'm usually able to recognize keys/pitches that flutes play quicker than other instruments, because I'm sensitive to color changes when the flute moves from one partial to another.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

I will definitively say that I have no ability whatsoever to determine the key of a work. Of course given that I have never had any aural training, I'm not at all surprised.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

I can't exactly tell what key signiture a piece is in with complete accuracy, but I can always hum it in the right key if I've heard it enough and I can tell when it's played in the wrong key.


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## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

I cannot tell the key of a piece, except if there are tell-tale chords that I recognize from other pieces.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

No problem, as long as I can look at the first page of the score over your shoulder.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

If the performance uses period instruments , which play at a somewhat lower pitch , it can be confusing 
at times . But the pitch they use tends to be rather arbotrary half tone lower than a=440 , roughly
=415 . There was no commonly agreed on pitch in the past, and the adoption of a general a=440 is a
20th century phenomenon .
The English harpsichordist Kenneth Gilbert, a Bach specialist, has recorded the Well Tempered Clavier 
at a WHOLE TONE LOWER than =440 . For DG/Archiv. I have perfect pitch and have heard it,, so it was rather jarring to hear the 
first prelude and fugue there, which is in c major, sounding like b flat major, not to mention the ones
with many sharps and flats !
How "authentic" this recording is is anybody's guess . It's also disconcerting (no pun intended) to hear
Mozart's Jupiter symphony, which is in c major, sounding like B major in period performances if you have
perfect pitch, although the ear can adjust .
So playing everything from the baroque and classical periods at a hlf tone below =440 is not authentic at all .
They used to use different pitch in different cities and towns not too far from each other long ago, which cretead difficulties
for travelling musicians .


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Marx said:


> Are you able to listen to say a Bach Cantata and figure out the key almost instantaneously? Are some people better at this than others? Would the masters adorned this skill from birth? I imagine Vivaldi had the innate proclivity to identity a particular key signature within seconds of a piece being played. Did he have to practise this skill?


This is an imprecise question. First, you ask if we can identify a "key," then tout Vivaldi as being able to identify a "key signature." These are different things.

A "*key" *is a *hearing *thing, a tonality, which revolves around one "key" note. This is tonality in its most general sense. Almost anyone can "hear" a tonality, even if they can't name the note. Thus, many folk musics can be identified as being "in a key area" or of expressing a tonality, by the way the notes are arranged, repetition, rhythmic accents, etc.

A *"key signature" *is a* written *thing, a way of scoring or writing down a tonal area, or arrangement of scale notes. In Western music, relative keys share the same key signature: the C major key signature (no sharps or flats) is used for A minor, although minor keys have chromatic alterations which must be written-in. The *modes* derived from C major (dorian, Phrygian, etc.) also share the same key signature. Beginning theory students always sight-sing from the spiral-bound Music for Sight Singing, which contains many examples of this. In such cases, the student is expected to figure out the tonality, regardless of what is written in the key signature. If the key signature contains 4 sharps, it could mean A major, F# minor, B dorian, or any of the other 6 modes contained in the A major (4 sharps) signature.

So, the score must be examined to identify the "key signature" that the song is written in; knowing that, we must then, further, use our ears to determined the tonal center or "key" note.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Oh, by the way, there are *3 "redundant" key signatures: F#/Gb, C#/Db, and G#/Ab. 
*
The sharp ones fall at the tail-end of the "circle of fifths" going clockwise from C: C-G-D-A-E-*B-F#-C#. *

The flat ones fall at the tail-end of the "circle of fourths," going counter-clockwise from C: C-F-Bb-Eb-Ab-*Db-Gb-Cb.

*These are used depending where you want to go musically: if you have arrived in F# (coming from E and B) and want to modulate "up" a fifth, then C# is the best choice, rather than Db.

If you arrived at Db via Eb and Ab, and want to modulate "up" a fourth, then Gb is the key, rather than F#.


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## Stargazer (Nov 9, 2011)

I can't do anything other than make wild, random guesses. I don't really have any musical training or education though...the extent of my knowledge comes from 6 months playing clarinet in elementary school band! 

I'm sure that I would be able to, and possibly most people would be able to, with enough practice. But I'm not exactly worried about trying to learn it - since I don't play music, key signatures have absolutely no importance to me. D minor, G major...as long as I like it, what do I care?


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Through playing by ear, I've developed some degree of what's called relative pitch, meaning I'm pretty accurate at figuring out which note/key to play in when the piano starts playing. This is a great help to me playing in church, because I never know which song or key they are going to start in until the first note. 

Also, if I listen to a saxophone, I can tell what key they're playing in just by the harmonic quirks inherent in the horn.

As far as listening to a performance, if I tried, I could figure it out, but I'm usually too lazy to go to that trouble.


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## mikey (Nov 26, 2013)

Are you talking about Perfect Pitch?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

You want to look up absolute hearing ("perfect pitch") and trained hearing, i.e. "Relative Pitch."

In the time, well through the late romantic era, just about any musician got an extensive and very solid ear training, 'solfege' -- often in the earlier eras, they were musically trained from early childhood -- and could then, with constant use after that training, identify pitches and or what key a piece is in.

[[ADD; any conservatory student who has successfully completed their undergraduate requirements also has extensive ear training... but for us contemporaries, this may have been the first bit of that training, vs. early childhood for musicians of yesteryear. END ADD]]

Many a famed composer has had "perfect pitch" but we do not have documented the fact of all of those who did or did not.


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## guy (Jan 4, 2014)

Everything's in D minor! Don't believe what anyone else tells you!


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

mmsbls said:


> I will definitively say that I have no ability whatsoever to determine the key of a work. Of course given that I have never had any aural training, I'm not at all surprised.


I don't see how anyone without perfect pitch could possibly accurately identify a key. At least not with the modern tuning system.


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## guy (Jan 4, 2014)

brianvds said:


> I don't see how anyone without perfect pitch could possibly accurately identify a key. At least not with the modern tuning system.


Equal temperament ruined key signatures. Everything may as well be in C major or A minor now.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

guy said:


> Equal temperament ruined key signatures. Everything may as well be in C major or A minor now.


Yup, at least as far as the sound is concerned. With many instruments, there are practical, performance reasons to write a piece is, say, E rather than G# or whatever.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

Perfect pitch is just as likely to occur in a bus driver as a musician -- it's something you're either born with or develops really early. I cannot identify a note on hearing it, but there are some notes, that if you asked me to hum them, I could do by remembering a piece I know well (like a low A from the opening of Mahler's Sixth).


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## Berlioznestpasmort (Jan 24, 2014)

GGluek said:


> Perfect pitch is just as likely to occur in a bus driver as a musician -- it's something you're either born with or develops really early. I cannot identify a note on hearing it, but there are some notes, that if you asked me to hum them, I could do by remembering a piece I know well (like a low A from the opening of Mahler's Sixth).


I knew a piano tuner many years ago with perfect pitch - he regarded this gift as nothing less than a curse and gave-up piano work to repair bicycles.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

As to the original query, I couldn't care less.


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## eipi (Aug 5, 2013)

When I was a child, and I played music regularly, I could easily tell what any particular note was. Now, I'm not so sharp. As a test -- I was listening to a random prelude in the Well Tempered Clavier. I chose D minor. It was C sharp minor (one half step away). If I had listened to the piano technique more closely (black keys versus white keys), I should have gotten C sharp minor. But apparently I can't tell a half step of pitch any more just by the way it sounds.

I think perfect pitch is just musical experience--not anything special, and not something you're born with. Indeed, the Western chromatic scale is, as far as I know, random; other cultures have different scales.


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