Key Signatures

When you first look at sheet music (the page with all the confusing lines and dots), what do you automatically look at? For every musician, when they first see sheet music and they want to play it they should automatically look at the key signature. This is how music gets organized, according to a specific scale (Carter 83). The key signature “takes the form most often of a note followed by the word ‘major’ or ‘minor’” (Carter 83). This means that when there is a chord, let’s use C for example, it would be followed by either “major” or “minor” to tell you what notes are included. C major is arguably the most used and simplest scale there is since there are no sharps or flats (which is why I am using it for all of my examples). When the key signature is known, playing along with the music or improvising is made a lot easier. I use this a lot when I play keyboard for my church band (side note: our favorite chord is Gsus, can you guess why?) Since I am the leader, I find the chords played with the song, determine the key signature, and then tell that to the rest of my team. My team and I find it very useful since we improvise what we play and we do not have sheet music to tell us what to play and when. A lot of the time during piano, I use the key signature to tell me what notes I can play with each chord so that the sound is still pleasant while not being the same exact chords throughout the song. When I know the key signature, I can make up the notes as I play. In the case of a C major key signature, I know that I can play a G chord and it still fits into the signature, but playing an A# minor would sound terrible. This is very useful for keyboard as well as other musical abilities such as writing music. The whole reason that it is not wise to mix key signatures is because certain chords have different sharps and flats in them. With a C chord, there are no sharps or flats but with a chord like E, there is a G# in it. Playing these two chords together would make the sound very messy and harsh to listen to.

https://youtu.be/4uWFxGQ3fvY

This is Sad Song by We The Kings (sorry about the metronome, my timing was really off during the song). The chords used in this video are F#, C#, G#, and A#. These are all in the same key signature, but for learning purposes, I won’t tell you what the actual key signature is. All I know is the chords of the song and then I listened to the song and improvised to find the notes that sound somewhat like the actual song.

Do you think it would be easier playing without music when you have the key signature, or just the chords of the song? Would it be possible to figure out the key signature using the chords? If so, what do you think is the key signature of the song?

Also, I am going to be uploading a duet that my best friend and I did together. You can see all the different components that I explained in my previous posts applied into real music.

Carter, Nicolas. Keys and Key Signatures Explained. Music Theory From Absolute Beginner to Expert. N.p.: Nicolas Carter, 2016. 83-84. Print.