All my comments about key are based on what I consider Pop music being defined as Rock, blues, country....stuff you generally hear on the radio.

I always considered Ab, Bb, and Eb to be horn keys. That assumption could very well have always been incorrect. I also associated those keys with jazz style music for the most part. There are exceptions. A famous blues tune called "Okie Dokie Stomp" made famous by Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown and written in E flat by Pluma Davis a trumpet player comes to mind.

Whereas C major and major keys in general always seemed to be associated with a happy fun style in whatever genres, but that was not always true.

The minor keys were in my mind were thought to be more related to sadder or more serious subject matter but again not always.

The emotional context of a song has many components and the lyrical content is most likely to be the biggest component. If for example the lyrics said " I just won a million bucks and I am jumping for joy" A minor, fiddle, and steel pedal guitar would be a very strange key and arrangement of instruments to express that idea!!

There are guitar based songs that simply can not be played in any other key than the original and really sound like the original. I am mostly talking about songs from electric blues players like Muddy Waters or John Lee Hooker. Most of that style is played in E major and the low E note on the guitar plays a dominant roll in the style. Similar things can occur with finger style guitar with quarter notes played on the open E or open A string. Certain ZZ Top songs only work in the original key.

I just tried an experiment on the piano. I played a 1/4/5 in C major and in F major and G major using triplets. They all sound very different to me but I find it hard or impossible to define the difference in terms of brighter or melancholy. When I have time today perhaps I will try the same experiment with vocal lines that contain sad or melancholy lyrics or happy and joyful lyrics. Then repeat the experiment in Db and B. I guess we would have to come to an agreed upon meaning to the words brighter and melancholy as it relates to sound....most likely not so easy to do...lol This is the kind of stuff that happens when you give a old retired guy a computer and a piano...lol...lol

Cheers,

Billy

Edit: I "ASSUME" that E flat is an easy key for a trumpet player and most likely why "Okie Dokie Stomp" was written in Eb to begin with.

Last edited by Planobilly; 01/29/19 07:54 AM. Reason: To dumb to get it correct the first time
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