Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum where sharps and flats made to make life more difficult?

Can't speak for an instrument with a fixed set of intervals like a clarinet would have, but the piano is a much more complex and dynamic beast, mixing very unlike substances like wood, felt, metal, approximately ~250 strings pulling ~20 tons against the plate that is affected very much by temperature and humidty, not only the piano's scale, for example.

A good expermiment for you...have someone play Moonlight Sonata's first movement in d-min, then have them play it in c#-min and see if you can discern a difference in the tonal quality - all else remaining equal, chances are you might notice a qualitative difference. I had a friend do that with me and I noticed a difference.

Sympathetic vibrations and overtones of the strings and how they interact with one another, etc, all contribute to this phenomena regardless of the piano, I am sure.

Yes, it would be interesting to understand why Debussy chose to EMaj for Arabesque for example, and why Chopin/Beethoven/Gershwin/Beatles, etc., chose the keys they did for all their classics.

Glen

It definitely *does* change the feeling of the piece! I am a singer and I dislike transposing pieces in general, but with older songs it usually works out OK to transpose it down a half step or more, since the tuning was not at A=440 (and actually, a lot of orchestras now tune much higher than that). This upward tuning wreaks havoc on the voice. Even Verdi was specific about what he wanted his music tuned to, let alone the key signatures.

With ET, the "feeling" won't change with transposition. The timbre character WILL change if you transpose very far. But here we're only talking about a semi-tone. So the timbre won't change.

The biggest difference between playing it in C and playing it in C# will be the fingering.

My piano was tuned about 3 weeks ago, so I don't think that can be a factor. (& what is 'color'? i's a whole other discussion!!) I don't think it's a change of pitch that I'm hearing - when I move the Scherzo up an octave in Dm, it still sounds like a minor, not like a major.


Well, I haven't ever been aware of a song being in a different key, so I couldn't say for sure. But I just saw Morodiene's response, & at my first piano lesson a couple of years ago, my piano teacher (who also sings) assessed whether I could hear whether random chords are in a minor or major key, & I had no problem identifying which was which. So moving the Scherzo from Dm to C major would also sound different. I don't think it's a difference in pitch, though that might be part of it - it's just the way it makes me feel.

I think some people hear through a different set of filters. I used to have a friend who once walked into my place & told me my turntable must be running slow because whatever tune was playing was not in the key that whoever the artist was - might have been Bill Evans - usually played it. (I know, that was an awful sentence - sorry!) I doubt that I'd be able to pick up that sort of difference.

And here we have to add in difficulty.

I suspect you do not interpret a piece that is well within your comfort zone the same way you do one that is difficult enough to cause you some stress.

C# vs C could easily affect that.

I once played a piece with 8 flats (B double flat in the key signature) in a wind band. If it's not actually physically difficult, it still can be a mental challenge.

I think this pretty much explains it. Some people will hear it, others won't. In high schoool before I ever had the chance to learn to play, didn't understand time signatures and had no clue about scales, one of my best friends had a turntable that drove me nuts because it was ever so slightly too slow. I could hear it, and had a really hard time ignoring it. She couldn't tell, couldn't hear it. She had a couple years of piano lessons and was learning guitar so if either one of us could hear it, it should have been her or at least you would think so. I also like "Ode To Joy" better in Gmajor than Cmajor. Don't know why, I just do.

Since the emotional character people attribute to keys isn't really explained by tuning temperament these days, I wonder if part of the answer comes from Levitan's research (cited earlier in this thread) on absolute memory for pitch. Most folks assume that "perfect pitch" is a rarity, and in the strictest definition of being able to consciously name an isolated note, perhaps it is rare. But a larger group of folks may still have a working memory of absolute pitch that allows them to mentally compare the same work transposed to different keys across time. Perhaps what they hear as the character of different keys is really the character of different pitches: it sounds right starting on G, it sounds too low, or sad, or something starting on C.

I dabble with playing by ear, and I can assure you that when I start hunting for the beginning note, it's almost always clear which note sounds like the correct beginning note just by the feel of it. If the song is in B flat, I would fail in picking out the melody in D major or F or whatever. It only sounds right if I hit the right key. I don't have perfect pitch (I don't think so anyway, as I tried a few tests and failed miserably), so I'm not sure why this is so. Could it be due entirely to the pitch?