Hi Billy,

What a great question!

Here's my take on it...

Eb major is a comfortable key for piano. Because of this, during the Tin Pan Alley period (approx. 1920 - mid-1950), when piano was a highly popular solo instrument, Eb major was a pretty popular key signature. Since many songs from this period became jazz standards, Eb major thus became easily found as a key signature. I think that many of PG Music's early demos would have been created by musicians with jazz as part of their background.

In the days of classical music, a couple of things should be noted. One is that concert pitch was not always defined as A=440 Hz like it is today. Sometimes, it was sharper and sometimes flatter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_pitch

This means, that a song heard today in the key of C major would not sound the same as a song played a couple of hundred years ago in C major.

The second thing that should be noted is that the equal temperament tuning system that we have today was not always used as a standard tuning system. "Equal temperament" means each neighbouring note across the range of musical notes has the same fundamental relationship with one another (this is related to the 12th root of 2).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_temperament

Bach, in fact, wrote his "Well tempered clavier" works to demonstrate that equal temperament was a viable tuning technique and better suited to many keys. Prior to equal temperament, one of the major systems was "Just Intonation" which was based on particular intervals like 4ths, 5ths and octaves having a 'perfect' sonic relationship in that they could be expressed in whole numbers. This is a Pythagorean tuning system. By comparison, the only sonic relationship that can be expressed in whole numbers in equal temperament is the octave. The "Just intonation" tuning system was only good for key signatures that had less than two or three sharps or flats.

So... while keys in flats and keys in sharps might have respectively stimulated sad and happy characteristics in past times when tuning systems were not standardised, I believe that that kind of sonic impact is much less today.

Whenever I change keys in BIAB, all I hear is the same music played at higher and lower pitches. I personally have not noticed that I experience any substantial emotional impact from the different keys. The emotional impact for me comes from whether major, minor or modal keys are used.

Just my two cents worth...

Regards,
Noel

MY SONGS...
Audiophile BIAB 2024