# Do keys almost always have a defined feeling/meaning to you?



## DavidMahler (Dec 28, 2009)

When you hear a piece that's in a specific key, does it make you feel a certain way.

It does for me. For instance, D major is almost always green, with more air, daytime, breezy. Almost every piece that I've ever heard in the key of D Major has traces of these elements. I used to get thrown when on period instruments, songs were played quarter and semitone flattened tuning.

Please discuss anything related to key and the emotional value which they contain


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## Ravellian (Aug 17, 2009)

Key doesn't give any indicator as to thematic or structural content, but it provides hints as to the instrumentation of the piece. For instance, D major suggests Violin Concerto. Eb major suggests a heavily orchestrated work with lots of brass. Anything over 4 accidentals suggests a smaller scale keyboard or chamber work.


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## DavidMahler (Dec 28, 2009)

That's from the technical standpoint of where instruments are least limited. I'm not suggesting a key could suggest a theme or structure, 

But does it provide an overall hue, an overall tint, a color.... an emotional base?


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## Ravellian (Aug 17, 2009)

DavidMahler said:


> That's from the technical standpoint of where instruments are least limited. I'm not suggesting a key could suggest a theme or structure,
> 
> But does it provide an overall hue, an overall tint, a color.... an emotional base?


No. The overall "color" is caused by the instrumentation (and the compositional style of the composer), the emotional content is determined by the thematic material. Key signatures have very little to do with the content of a work.


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## DavidMahler (Dec 28, 2009)

I disagree entirely....

There is a color associated with every key for me. I do have absolute pitch though. But whether or not hear Pictures at an Exhibition played on piano OR orchestrated by Ravel will not impact whatsoever the color and hues of the piece. Typically pieces in D Major are more joyful than piece is D-flat Major. The emotional content is caused by the thematic material, but I do believe a good composer chooses their key wisely, not only on the basis of instrumentation, but also on the basis of having an specific hue in the work. This is partially why great jazz instrumentalists will rarely transpose the original key of the song, as it was composed with a specific key in mind and that key translates into an base emotional value


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

It certainly does for me. Sometimes I feel like I'm just making stuff up, but it is true that when I was younger I used to see color in keys. I still have perfect pitch to limited degree.

Talking major, I'll try to feel this out, keys aren't necessarily characterized in a related manner: G Major seems a very arboreal key, lush a green. I don't know if its coincidence that green starts with G. There is something misty about F Sharp, slightly chilly. F is water in quantity enough to be blue. E is a little bit chilly, and somehow yellowish. E flat is a stabler E. D is gentle and nocturnal. C is bright daylight. B is evening. B flat is comfortable. A is center of orange(color), very energetic. A flat, laid back I guess? I don't know.

C-E manages to give me a yellow impression, C is lightbulb yellow, and E is darker. F-G is in the blue green spectrum, F being blue and G green. A flat-B is orange, A being orange. 

These ideas, as interesting as they are to me, don't feel very systematic or consistent. And I'm not talking individual notes so much as Major key signatures. Minor is a different matter.


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## Ravellian (Aug 17, 2009)

It makes a difference for certain instruments, since some simply resonate better or get a more brilliant sound in a certain key. For instance, the violin sounds best in D major since the D and A are open strings on the violin. Brass instruments tend to sound better on key signatures with flats. Key signatures are chosen for largely practical applications like this.

Beyond that, however, conceptually, with the equal temperament tuning systems currently in place, one key does not sound inherently different from another. Even if many composers decide to write a bunch of mellow-sounding pieces in Db major and a bunch of joyful pieces in D major, that association does not mean that Db major is inherently a mellow-sounding key. Brahms's Symphony No. 2 in D major is pretty mellow-sounding to me... The opening of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto certainly sounds joyful and magnificent to me, yet it's in Db major :O


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

I'm going to be an *** here and say Ravellian isn't part of the perfect pitch club.


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## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

In equal temperament, all keys are constructed with the same intervals. In other temperament systems, however, each key may sound a bit different. As Ravellian said, key does have an effect on certain instruments: the different ways sound is produced with those instruments will cause them to resonate slightly differently (and have a slightly different timbre) for different pitches. Building on that, some composers would use different tunings on some instruments to achieve a different effect (for example, strings were often tuned so they would sound a semitone higher than normal, causing them to sound more brilliantly).

However, it should be noted that you are not the only one to whom certain keys always have certain "feels." Throughout the classical eras (Baroque all the way through Romantic), many composers believed that certain keys were better suited to expressing certain emotions, regardless of instrumentation, and composed as such. For example, many of Beethoven's stormiest, most emotionally turbulent works are in C minor. German poet (and potential musicologist) Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart wrote a chapter in his _Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst_ (_Ideas on the Aesthetics of Music_) about what emotions each key was best suited for conveying, and many other composers, musicologists, and theorists have done similarly. Many have assigned colors to certain keys, intervals, and even individual notes, thus alluding to some sort of synesthesia (probably connected to perfect pitch). The most common keys typically have very strong associations with them, handed down over centuries: C major represents innocence, G major represents nostalgia, D major represents joy, F major represents calm, E major represents triumph... but there are plenty of counterexamples.


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## Dodecaplex (Oct 14, 2011)

I've always associated F minor with apathy. In fact, every piece in that key that I've ever heard sounds almost "emotionless" (for lack of a better word). It sounds completely callous and indifferent and whatever other words that I can't think of right now. Yet, its relative major is A flat major, which in my opinion, is the most comforting and heroic (get it?) key.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

DavidMahler said:


> I disagree entirely....
> 
> There is a color associated with every key for me. I do have absolute pitch though. But whether or not hear Pictures at an Exhibition played on piano OR orchestrated by Ravel will not impact whatsoever the color and hues of the piece. Typically pieces in D Major are more joyful than piece is D-flat Major. The emotional content is caused by the thematic material, but I do believe a good composer chooses their key wisely, not only on the basis of instrumentation, but also on the basis of having an specific hue in the work.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_synesthesia

synesthesia is a very fascinating phenomenom, but rationally i can't understand how it works, because it's true that in the equal temperament there's obviously no difference from an interval to another...


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I admire those of you who relate to keys viscerally or visually. I don't, but I think I'm missing something, because some composers felt that way - Bruckner had a catalogue of what keys represented, and Messaien wrote in colors. 

Personally, I like the key of F, because that's the key where I can play my best sax licks.


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## kv466 (May 18, 2011)

Key has a lot to do with the way things sound and the way they make me feel...even taking it down to something as simple as using a capo on a guitar for a song you're used to singing in a minor...put a capo on the third fret and suddenly you're singing that song in c minor and I don't know a soul who wouldn't think that makes you feel very different; same song.

Now, taken to a piano or orchestral level...just think of one of your favorite works...think of what key it is in and then how you would like it transposed to an entirely different key. Maybe you would, maybe you wouldn't. But I doubt one would argue that the colors don't drastically change. 

A couple of my personal favorites are e-flat, d minor, a minor, G and f#minor.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

I find the key of a work entirely irrelevant to my experience of it. I can't tell the key by listening alone, and, even if I read what key it is in beforehand, it doesn't affect my reaction to the piece.

Certainly, unless you have absolute pitch, key _is_ irrelevant in equal temperament (except for particular instrument sonority). If I am composing, the key I choose is purely based on what key a theme happened to be in when I thought of it.


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

Ravellian said:


> Key doesn't give any indicator as to thematic or structural content, but it provides hints as to the instrumentation of the piece. For instance, D major suggests Violin Concerto. Eb major suggests a heavily orchestrated work with lots of brass. Anything over 4 accidentals suggests a smaller scale keyboard or chamber work.


As far as our modern form of temperament goes, that is basically the case. However, music written before equal temperament was dominant, was written with the different intervals of different key signatures in mind. Most music before equal temperament was conceived of thematically with the key signature in mind.


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## DavidMahler (Dec 28, 2009)

If I digitally transposed Beethoven's Eroica to F# Major, did not speed it up, just changed the key. The instruments had no harder time playing it because it's a digital transposition, do you really think it would not change the emotion / color / temperament of the work?

Picture you favorite piece of music in a revised key. It would be the equivalent of taking a painting and filtering through a new color. Picture a green toned Mona Lisa or McDonald's sign turned orange. A Key to me is the basis of color. It may be chosen to suit certain orchestration, but I believe a great composer ALWAYS decides on the key as to suit the vision of the music and sometimes when choosing a key first (knowing you're going to write for specific instrument) may lead the brain to a particular type of melody.


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## Klavierspieler (Jul 16, 2011)

Keys never have a specific meaning for me. I have no perfect pitch.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

DavidMahler said:


> If I digitally transposed Beethoven's Eroica to F# Major, did not speed it up, just changed the key. The instruments had no harder time playing it because it's a digital transposition, do you really think it would not change the emotion / color / temperament of the work?
> 
> Picture you favorite piece of music in a revised key. It would be the equivalent of taking a painting and filtering through a new color. Picture a green toned Mona Lisa or McDonald's sign turned orange. A Key to me is the basis of color. It may be chosen to suit certain orchestration, but I believe a great composer ALWAYS decides on the key as to suit the vision of the music and sometimes when choosing a key first (knowing you're going to write for specific instrument) may lead the brain to a particular type of melody.


This may be true for you, and it seems impossible to imagine anything else, but this isn't how it works for the majority of people.


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## Philip (Mar 22, 2011)

Ravellian is right. Furthermore:

The differences you may attribute to key color (in equal temperament) are in fact due to *transposition*, and one doesn't necessarily imply the other. You can illustrate this by transposing a piece an octave lower or higher, you will "feel" very differently about the piece, but has the key changed? No, the armature is the same.

Transposition affects non-linearities in the ear, as well as in the brain. An example of the former is the perceived human hearing:









ie. different frequencies are heard at different volumes.

An example of the latter is the effect pulses, or beats (see brainwaves). Here's what happens when two close pure tones are combined:










ie. a pulse is generated at frequency f1-f2 eg. 440Hz and 441Hz tones create a 1Hz pulse.

When transposing a piece, these pulses are all shifted in period proportionally to the pitch modulation, but the thing is, exponential increase is pitch is perceived as _linear_, while the pulses increase exponentially fast. For instance:

A4 + A#4 = 26.16Hz beat
A5 + A#5 = 52.33Hz beat
A6 + A#6 = 104.66Hz beat

A4 -> A5 -> A6 is linear (octave)
26.16Hz -> 52.33Hz -> 104.66Hz is exponential (base 2)

There are many other factors that come into play, such as instrument frequency response, room acoustics, psychological effects, etc.

However, if you want to minimize these effects, transpose an audio file a semi-tone higher or lower (Audacity), the non-linearities are negligible, and the sound samples are much harder to identify as the original, unless you possess perfect pitch i imagine, while the key is completely different, perhaps the farthest they would be from one another in natural and well-tempered scales.

PS. Many people think they possess "perfect pitch" when in reality they have relative pitch, which can be trained, or lost again.


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## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

Everyone keeps ignoring the historical aspects, though: we didn't always use equal temperament, and even when we did, many composers composed along the belief that certain keys are better at expressing certain emotions, hence the large number of works that fit the traditional "affective key characteristics." In a way, certain keys _do_ express certain emotions more often than others *because composers did it that way.*



Kopachris said:


> In equal temperament, all keys are constructed with the same intervals. In other temperament systems, however, each key may sound a bit different. As Ravellian said, key does have an effect on certain instruments: the different ways sound is produced with those instruments will cause them to resonate slightly differently (and have a slightly different timbre) for different pitches. Building on that, some composers would use different tunings on some instruments to achieve a different effect (for example, strings were often tuned so they would sound a semitone higher than normal, causing them to sound more brilliantly).
> 
> However, it should be noted that you are not the only one to whom certain keys always have certain "feels." Throughout the classical eras (Baroque all the way through Romantic), many composers believed that certain keys were better suited to expressing certain emotions, regardless of instrumentation, and composed as such. For example, many of Beethoven's stormiest, most emotionally turbulent works are in C minor. German poet (and potential musicologist) Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart wrote a chapter in his _Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst_ (_Ideas on the Aesthetics of Music_) about what emotions each key was best suited for conveying, and many other composers, musicologists, and theorists have done similarly. Many have assigned colors to certain keys, intervals, and even individual notes, thus alluding to some sort of synesthesia (probably connected to perfect pitch). The most common keys typically have very strong associations with them, handed down over centuries: C major represents innocence, G major represents nostalgia, D major represents joy, F major represents calm, E major represents triumph... but there are plenty of counterexamples.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

Kopachris said:


> Everyone keeps ignoring the historical aspects, though: we didn't always use equal temperament, and even when we did, many composers composed along the belief that certain keys are better at expressing certain emotions, hence the large number of works that fit the traditional "affective key characteristics." In a way, certain keys _do_ express certain emotions more often than others *because composers did it that way.*


The fact that certain keys may be statistically represented more often by a particular character doesn't mean that the character is therefore intrinsic to the key. And, considering that we're talking about listening (and so the instruments that pieces are recorded with today), the composer's use or not of equal temperament is irrelevant.


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## DavidMahler (Dec 28, 2009)

you are wrong sir, I'm not trying to be argumentative....just plain wrong with the way you assess this information though. I know from first hand experience. You can play any piece in its original key at any octave and I will always feel the same way about the color of the piece.

If you transpose a piece an octave down or an octave higher, I would feel very differently about the piece YES, but the color would maintain. Key provides the color of a piece, composers know this. A key is chosen as the color template in many casees.



Philip said:


> Ravellian is right. Furthermore:
> 
> The differences you may attribute to key color (in equal temperament) are in fact due to *transposition*, and one doesn't necessarily imply the other. You can illustrate this by transposing a piece an octave lower or higher, you will "feel" very differently about the piece, but has the key changed? No, the armature is the same.
> 
> ...


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## DavidMahler (Dec 28, 2009)

In my opinion, if Beethoven's 5th Symphony were in E Minor, it would fail. Not because it may be harder for some instruments to play in that key, but because, E Minor is a much warmer key than C Minor and because of this the music would make absolutely no sense.

Conversely, if Brahms 4th Symphony were in C Minor it would make no sense because it would be missing warm humane aspect which the E minor provides which C Minor does not.


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## DavidMahler (Dec 28, 2009)

Polednice said:


> The fact that certain keys may be statistically represented more often by a particular character doesn't mean that the *character is therefore intrinsic to the key.* And, considering that we're talking about listening (and so the instruments that pieces are recorded with today), the composer's use or not of equal temperament is irrelevant.


Great way of phrasing this.

I believe you are spot on except opposite. I believe even if you don't have perfect pitch or even relative pitch, the character of the music is intrinsically attached to the key which the composer chooses. It's there whether or not you can sense it. It's part of the DNA of the piece, very much like if a novel is written in Russian but then translated to English, it will never escape the fact that certain parts of the translation will ultimately be glued to the Russian dialect. The key is always felt even if not experienced consciously.


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## Ravellian (Aug 17, 2009)

DavidMahler said:


> Great way of phrasing this.
> 
> I believe you are spot on except opposite. I believe even if you don't have perfect pitch or even relative pitch, the character of the music is intrinsically attached to the key which the composer chooses. It's there whether or not you can sense it. It's part of the DNA of the piece, very much like if a novel is written in Russian but then translated to English, it will never escape the fact that certain parts of the translation will ultimately be glued to the Russian dialect. The key is always felt even if not experienced consciously.


Do you have any means of supporting this besides just stating it's how you "feel"? Speaking about equal temperament here, not earlier tuning systems.


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## jalex (Aug 21, 2011)

I have a vague sense of associating some keys with colours, usually in major/minor pairs: E maj and minor are yellow, the major bright yellow and the minor duller and leaning towards green more; D major and minor are both blue, the minor deep and the major brilliant; G minor and major are green, major light and bright to the minor's dark and deep; A major is bright red and A minor is deep scarlet. C maj seems white but I get nothing from C minor. B minor and major are the same shade of light blue. F# maj and minor are both the same light green, but fainter than G major. I get nothing from either Eb maj or min, or Ab maj or min. Nor for C# min, but Db major is a faint, metallic blue-grey. Nothing from either F's. Both Bb's give weak images of duller blues than D major, the minor's being duller than the major's.

However I don't have perfect pitch and I only experience this when playing, and I don't attach any significance to it. I probably wouldn't notice if the Eroica were played in E or D rather than Eb (though it would obviously sound different with a greater pitch difference). 

Are there any pieces you think are written in the 'wrong' key? I strongly suspect that whatever key a great work had been written in originally you would defend the choice.


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## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

Polednice said:


> The fact that certain keys may be statistically represented more often by a particular character doesn't mean that the character is therefore intrinsic to the key. And, considering that we're talking about listening (and so the instruments that pieces are recorded with today), the composer's use or not of equal temperament is irrelevant.


I was merely offering a possible explanation for why some people might feel that certain keys reflect certain emotions.


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## DavidMahler (Dec 28, 2009)

Ravellian said:


> Do you have any means of supporting this besides just stating it's how you "feel"? Speaking about equal temperament here, not earlier tuning systems.


Honestly, no...but unless you can experience it from within there cannot be a case made. Only way is to ask the composer of particular work if the key was chosen for a reason beyond the functionality of the orchestration. I'm sure there is literature for pages of composers discussing the way keys made them feel and the specific reasons they wrote a piece in a specific key.

If you think keys exist as a resource to allow certain instruments to function better, then whats the real point of them? Is there function merely to assist an orchestration? Is that really how you perceive their entire purpose? Do you really not think that keys exist on their own with an inherent value that is glued to a feeling, to a hue?


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## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

DavidMahler said:


> Only way is to ask the composer of particular work if the key was chosen for a reason beyond the functionality of the orchestration. I'm sure there is literature for pages of composers discussing the way keys made them feel and the specific reasons they wrote a piece in a specific key.





Kopachris said:


> In equal temperament, all keys are constructed with the same intervals. In other temperament systems, however, each key may sound a bit different. As Ravellian said, key does have an effect on certain instruments: the different ways sound is produced with those instruments will cause them to resonate slightly differently (and have a slightly different timbre) for different pitches. Building on that, some composers would use different tunings on some instruments to achieve a different effect (for example, strings were often tuned so they would sound a semitone higher than normal, causing them to sound more brilliantly).
> 
> However, it should be noted that you are not the only one to whom certain keys always have certain "feels." Throughout the classical eras (Baroque all the way through Romantic), many composers believed that certain keys were better suited to expressing certain emotions, regardless of instrumentation, and composed as such. For example, many of Beethoven's stormiest, most emotionally turbulent works are in C minor. German poet (and potential musicologist) Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart wrote a chapter in his _Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst_ (_Ideas on the Aesthetics of Music_) about what emotions each key was best suited for conveying, and many other composers, musicologists, and theorists have done similarly. Many have assigned colors to certain keys, intervals, and even individual notes, thus alluding to some sort of synesthesia (probably connected to perfect pitch). The most common keys typically have very strong associations with them, handed down over centuries: C major represents innocence, G major represents nostalgia, D major represents joy, F major represents calm, E major represents triumph... but there are plenty of counterexamples.


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## Machiavel (Apr 12, 2010)

Nobody has mention Synesthesia yet. So many have it like me. It's a neuro based condition that one effect trigger another.

I see a circle blue, a triangle green, a square and so on. I also do association between color and smell. Green is like this smell you get in the woods like the musk, trees with the humidity! Liszt, Brahms amd debussy have it also. Listz music is full of strings, brahms piano full of horns, debussy full of flute! Liszt is known to speak about colors too other musicians.


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## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

Machiavel said:


> Nobody has mention Synesthesia yet.


Yes, we have.


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## Philip (Mar 22, 2011)

DavidMahler said:


> you are wrong sir, I'm not trying to be argumentative....just plain wrong with the way you assess this information though. I know from first hand experience. You can play any piece in its original key at any octave and I will always feel the same way about the color of the piece.
> 
> If you transpose a piece an octave down or an octave higher, I would feel very differently about the piece YES, but the color would maintain. Key provides the color of a piece, composers know this. A key is chosen as the color template in many casees.


Reading my original post, you will find that our points of view are actually in agreement. Obviously, if most people hear a different character in different keys, there might be some truth to that. That being said, i think your approach is a little naive, and perhaps somewhat biased by something you might have heard beforehand.

The idea of color in keys is certainly not a novel one, Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1634-1704) in _Rules of Composition_, describes tonalities in the following manner:

_Tonalité - Tempérament
do majeur - Gai et guerrier
do mineur - Obscur et triste
ré majeur - Joyeux et très guerrier
ré mineur - Grave et dévot_ ... etc.

As others have said, in this very thread, the main motivation for this cataloging is the fact that the set of intervals are completely unique from one key to the next, hence a different character, _regardless_ of the absolute pitch of these keys (this is important).

However, in equal temperament, all that distinguishes the different keys _is_ their absolute pitch... because all semi-tone intervals have been made the same. This can only lead us to believe that the remaining, perhaps diluted, character of the keys must have to do with the absolute pitch, ie. the actual frequencies and how their relations change after transposition.

From this observation follows that, a work of music, or more technically a set of tonal relations established in time, fixed by an initial condition of tonality, produces different _psychological_ effects based on the initial condition of _tonality_, hence the term *psycho-acoustic*.

Instinctively, this is obvious: different pitches evoke different reactions and emotions, eg. the voice of a man grabs your attention differently than that of a woman. So why wouldn't the transposition of a work, ie. a pitch modulation, change our perception? It does, because that's how the brain is wired. The examples in my previous post are only a subset of the concepts required to properly model this effect.

Nonetheless, i think your extrapolation of this hypothesis to relating a certain "key" to a certain "color", but not a "feeling", rather than the broader concepts of psychoacoustics, is completely misguided. You are saying that a piece transposed an octave lower retains the same "color" while the overall "feeling" changes... the semantics here aren't rigorous enough to hold any hint of relevancy and weight in an argument.

PS. Therefore, i won't bother challenging it, but for the sake of our fun and lightness, please enlighten us as to what colors and feelings the transposition of the 5th symphony, 12 semi-tones lower, as opposed to 13 semi-tones lower, awakens in your soul.

PPS. And while you're at it, given that octave transposition doesn't alter color but only feeling, please tell us what feelings the 5th symphony summons, a million octaves above.


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## DavidMahler (Dec 28, 2009)

Philip said:


> Reading my original post, you will find that our points of view are actually in agreement. Obviously, if most people hear a different character in different keys, there might be some truth to that. That being said, i think your approach is a little naive, and perhaps somewhat biased by something you might have heard beforehand.
> 
> The idea of color in keys is certainly not a novel one, Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1634-1704) in _Rules of Composition_, describes tonalities in the following manner:
> 
> ...


I've read this......

do you have perfect pitch?

You speak as someone who does not understand what I am speaking of.

I believe I understand everything you're saying to a T.

I'm telling you simply that if I were to hear one melody sung by a bass and then another by a soprano, but in the same key.... it's color would remain the same for me. And my premise for this thread was to determine how many others felt this way and how many thought composers used key signatures as a resource for this.

I can spot the difference between A440 and A442, but I can also recognize they are intended to be the same note. I can allow a margin of transposition in my brain up to a quarter tone without really thinking about it and up to a semitone if I understand this going in. But I'm convinced keys are chosen by great composers for musical reasons rather than functional.


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## TrazomGangflow (Sep 9, 2011)

D major is my favorite key. For me it feels triumphant but beautiful. I don't have as clear of a vision for the minor keys though. E flat major seems very deep and beautiful. F major sounds varied, in some ways it seems simple in other ways its very deep. G major seems like a standard key to me. E major seems a little mysterious. A major seems somewhat childish. B major seems complex.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

DavidMahler said:


> I've read this......
> 
> do you have perfect pitch?


It's not clear whether or not you are talking to people with perfect pitch, or to everyone. It seems like you are describing your experience as someone with perfect pitch, but then extrapolating that what you experience must be the case for _everyone_. This is obviously not true, so you should be accepting of the view of someone without perfect pitch, even if you personally can never experience what they experience, just as they cannot experience what you experience.


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## DavidMahler (Dec 28, 2009)

my OP is more about whether you think composers were very attentive and intentional with their key choices for mood and or color purposes. I defintiely think they were. I would be stunned if they weren't, especially the truly great ones.


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## lorelei (Jan 14, 2013)

Polednice said:


> It's not clear whether or not you are talking to people with perfect pitch, or to everyone. It seems like you are describing your experience as someone with perfect pitch, but then extrapolating that what you experience must be the case for _everyone_. This is obviously not true, so you should be accepting of the view of someone without perfect pitch, even if you personally can never experience what they experience, just as they cannot experience what you experience.


 I agree with you on that one. They definitely were (and I try to be as a composer myself, when I am composing within a key). But yes, keys definitely have their purposes... I know there are many examples up to now above, but a great one for me is Mozart's lacrymosa... just wouldn't be the same in, say, e minor.


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## Tristan (Jan 5, 2013)

Not really. I do have synesthesia, but not for keys. I also don't have perfect pitch. I certainly prefer some keys over others, but I don't know if that's due to any perceived difference between keys, or simply due to what I associate them with (or them being uncommon, etc.) For example, I love B major. That started out because B major was so uncommon that I would be fascinated by the rare times I came across a piece in B major. But then I discovered many great pieces (particularly finales) in B major: The Firebird finale, Swan Lake finale, Dvorak's Cello Concerto, Borodin's Symphony No. 2, etc. and I got to like it even more.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

I have very good relative pitch at least. I don't think I have perfect pitch, but I can sing a G3 without any external stimuli, because it's the first note of Beethoven's 5th.

As for keys, a friend and I were going over pieces in D minor recently, and there's definitely a certain stormy feel that accompanies it. B minor sounds dramatic, A-flat major sounds relaxed, C major sounds happy, but I submit that these things may be due in part or whole to conventions of usage rather than innate qualities.


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## KRoad (Jun 1, 2012)

TrazomGangflow said:


> D major is my favorite key. For me it feels triumphant but beautiful. I don't have as clear of a vision for the minor keys though. E flat major seems very deep and beautiful. F major sounds varied, in some ways it seems simple in other ways its very deep. G major seems like a standard key to me. E major seems a little mysterious. A major seems somewhat childish. B major seems complex.


The meaning we ascribe and the adjectives we conjure up to describe must surely swing around at an anchor of cultural specificity. At this point we are thrust back into the realm of hermeneutics and the historicity of understanding. Psycho-acoustics be "gosh-darned".


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## Tristan (Jan 5, 2013)

What about the whole "major = happy; minor = sad" situation? Is there any psychological basis for why we perceive it that way?


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## Kopachris (May 31, 2010)

Tristan said:


> What about the whole "major = happy; minor = sad" situation? Is there any psychological basis for why we perceive it that way?


Yes. At least, there's a theory. A pure major third is very close in the harmonic series, and thus sounds "pure". Any noticeable departure from that closeness sounds "impure". Another theory is that the lowness of the minor third (a depression, if you will) compared to the major third equates to a "lowness" of emotion.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Tristan said:


> What about the whole "major = happy; minor = sad" situation? Is there any psychological basis for why we perceive it that way?


Adding to what Kopachris said, minor music tends to be more chromatic, due to certain voice leading considerations, and emphasizes dissonant intervals more. A lot of people tend to be fooled by chromatic music like the finales of Bruckner's 9th (3rd mvt) and Mahler's 9th. Both are in major keys, but I've seen them often referred to as minor.

Edit: I'd like to add that a lot of the confusion comes out of the fact that Romantic era composers switched between major and minor modes rather freely. In Classical era music, changes of mode could set off sections of a piece, but would not be frequently mixed together. Romantic composers continually blurred the line.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

DavidMahler said:


> When you hear a piece that's in a specific key, does it make you feel a certain way.
> 
> It does for me. For instance, D major is almost always green, with more air, daytime, breezy. Almost every piece that I've ever heard in the key of D Major has traces of these elements.


No. That's called "affekt." It went away with equal temperament. Affekt was _always_ about color differences _within a key_ caused by temperaments used in the past, such as "mean-tone" tuning and the like, where the major third in one key was higher than the major third in another key (in relation to its respective root), and might be perceived as "brighter" or happier.

You have to have very good relative pitch to hear this effect, as with Peter Watchorn's WTC cycle using the Bach/Lehman tuning; but it's there, and might have affected how Bach wrote the pieces for each key.

"Hmm, the key of Bb has a good fifth, so I can go to a dominant area there for a good bit; but its "good major third" will sound good on I, but crummy on vi minor, because the fifth will be too flat. Note to self: avoid vi..."



DavidMahler said:


> I used to get thrown when on period instruments, songs were played quarter and semitone flattened tuning.


Now you're talking about something different, "absolute pitch memory." If you hear this as colors, that's totally subjective, and not to be confused with "affekt."


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