Now, Im not a classically trained composer, but I am a trained musician, and I've picked up most of my compositional sensibilities from my performance history(concert, symphonic, jazz, marching, choral) and personal study of those pieces through the years. I began composing music using the Trackers like FT2 and Modplug, and continue to use them today on my game projects (while I earn the money to beef up the studio and move to full blow sequencer/samplers, hopefully coinciding with my return to college where I will persure some real compositional education). Now, each row of keys corresponds to a new octave in the tracker, so a=c5, b=c#5, q=c4, etc. I quickly began to note that this ended up leading to me writing a lot of things in the key of C, because its just easy to start there. As I've matured I've been able to push out from that, but I've just had a curious whim, so I've decided to poll the others here, maybe some schooled composers. What leads you to write in a given key? Is it just a sensibility, or an inspiration, or a random whim? I want to get beyond "Major is happy and minor is sad" observations. For me, I pounce around until I find one that just seems suitable for what I'm going for. What leads you to your key?

Personally, I cannot give a reason I make my music in any given key. I cannont explain why I use this scale with that one or mix that down with that much compression.

I just make the music that the girls like. When the girls like it, you can tell that the dudes want it.

As long as I'm feeling it, then I know it's legititimately from me, though that doesn't quite fit the topic.

Back to the point, just as it's magical to create the music, be sure as not to forget the magic to watch the music.

When the music stops everybody's going to want to talk about it. They were listening to it. They wouldn't listen to it if they knew why the artist did it in that way. They would critisize it.

Pick it apart and analyze it, eventually their natural ego will find a flaw and, if they are practicing musicians (they understand it remember?), they find a way to reproduce it better. Which is good and bad, depending on the effort and artist uses to stay close to themselves.

Stay close to yourself. If you're feeling A C# G that day, then go on and sound A C# G. U know?

Newbie J Sabott

Quote: Original post by krikkit
I quickly began to note that this ended up leading to me writing a lot of things in the key of C, because its just easy to start there.

By comparison, I write most of my orchestral stuff in A minor for the same reason. Yet my guitar music I write in Dm, because the open strings all fit in that key. (Most guitar music is in Em or Am, but my guitar is tuned down 1 whole step.) In that case, it's about convenience.

Quote: What leads you to write in a given key? Is it just a sensibility, or an inspiration, or a random whim? I want to get beyond "Major is happy and minor is sad" observations. For me, I pounce around until I find one that just seems suitable for what I'm going for. What leads you to your key?

Well firstly, A minor, B minor, C minor, etc, are all exactly equivalent in terms of 'feel', providing you're using equally-tempered instruments. (If you don't know what that means, then you almost certainly are.) The same goes for the major key.

So then the choice is really just between minor or major, and obviously they have slightly different characters. But really, the character we associate with them is entirely social - there's nothing inherently psychologically sad about minor keys, but we associate that pattern with music played at sad events. Similarly we associate the major key with more upbeat music (eg. children's rhymes). Other less common keys have other associations - the double harmonic might sound Egyptian or Eastern, the blues scale obviously makes you think of blues, etc. The harmonic minor sounds more 'classical' than the natural minor, because older music uses the former (or specifically, uses the raised 7th in perfect cadences etc) whereas rock and pop music rarely does. It's all just about the association between music and whatever you want to evoke or portray.

If the song has lyrics, the intended voice might dictate the key. If you're gonna use horns - real horns - that also might dictate the key. On a guitar some chords only sound 'right' in some keys.

I always have a melody in my mind before I start writing it down, so I find the notes that match that. If it's being synthesised then it get's to stay in that key. If it's being performed it gets transposed to something that makes sense for the instruments in question.

Hey,

I usually write stuff starting in either Am or C, etc to get the basic idea of the progression [kind of] and the melody should work; ie, what I hear in my head.

I know it's a bad habit, and although the different keys each have their own distinct 'flavour', most of the time you can get by with checking stuff in one of those two [or some other more obscure key which revolves mainly around a bunch of the white notes...]. Mainly convenience, because I can tell much better what a change is going to sound like, particularly from Am, and have picked out a few favourites [most of which even translate alright into other keys]. I pick the scale that fits the mood that I'm trying to write, and I pick a scale that I'm far less likely to misplay what I hear inside my head on. Once I have a fair idea of what I'm wanting, I go and find the key that sounds the best and prepare to play in that.

So, initially at least, it's usually my laziness that dictates which key to use, but then I have a somewhat systematic approach to find exactly what I want. Of course, this system doesn't actually work so well in practice, but where's the fun in making something simple?

CJM

Following the great composers, Beethoven, Liszt, and Rachmaninoff, I like to compose in C# minor. I do most of my compositions on the piano, and so I'm not restricted by instruments (horns, voice, etc.) to use a particular key.

I think choosing the "correct" key depends on your personal preference. Some people like A minor/C major (for piano) because there are no flats or sharps, making it easier to play. Some people like F# major because it's mostly sharps (which some find easy to play, since the black keys tend to be "highlighted" on the piano).

While it may not seem important as to what key you begin in, what key you modulate to makes all the difference in the world. For example, if you began a triumphant piece in Eb major like many classical composers do, you have the option to modulate to related keys such as C minor, G minor, Ab major, or the dominant Bb major. But classical composers easily tired of this and decided that what added an extra layer of emotion to their work was through common-tone modulation to foreign keys such as B major, A major, or E major (the Neapolitan). An example of this is beginning in Eb major and using the tonic Eb as a common tone to modulate to B major (thus Eb becomes D#, the third of B major).

The idea is that if you can make the modulation sound natural, you’ve already made the music that much more interesting.

In many cases you might want select a key based upon what the transposition does in other instruments. In Mahler’s 5th symphony, the concert instruments play in C# minor (like LamerGamer suggested), but the clarinets play in B, and the horns in F#. It’s not pretty, but he had plans to modulate to D major by the end, so it worked out well.