Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Can you identify (by ear only) what key something is in?

When you hear a piece of music played, can you identify the key it's in without seeing the score? Of course, many pieces feature changes of key along the way, but just in general, can you pick out the key when you hear music?

How about if you hear a scale being played, can you identify the key?

Not at all.

Nope

Me neither. I think you'd need perfect pitch to do this.

You need perfect pitch for that. From what I've read it's a rather annoying gift and not really that useful.

Not I.

Nope.

Nope. However, there are a couple of regulars in my song circle that can do it.

More common is knowing which key certain popular songs and pieces tend to be in, and then knowing if the rendition is in that key or not.

Well that's a fairly easy one. You sing along with it on the radio, then you hear it somewhere else but you can tell now the melody goes too low or high for your voice (or at least you need to strain more).

I wonder how easy it is. For trained singers, the identification rate would tend to be high. Pianists? So many pianists seem to skip or skimp on ear training, that I wonder.

I might be able to do the trick on songs I know very well, which is a very low number of songs.

I know someone who mentions "knowing what the key sounds like." I think he has a pretty good idea what key something is in when he hears it.

I try to guess now and then when I hear something new, but really, I haven't a clue.

In my HS band I thought it was funny that the only boy with perfect pitch was the drummer. We would test him with things like elevator dings, and the conductor's tuner always agreed. He now plays keyboard in MA.

Can you infer the key from the mood of the piece, I.e. happy 4:4 marches are probably C Major?

No I cannot. Any piece or scale transposed sounds the same, just higher or lower (if you don't count the changes in piano tone). Of course it's easy to tell whether a scale is major or minor, but that's all.

While I do have good pitch recognition, I have always freely transposed everything while singing and still do it with my pieces, so I never developed memory for pitch.

I had a friend years ago, a composer who had graduated from Julliard, who had perfect pitch. He was over for dinner once and I tested him on everything from a spoon hitting a glass to the squeak on a pepper grinder. I kept running to the piano to test him. At one point he told me that one of the notes on the piano was a touch flat. I got out my tuner and, he was right. My Dad, who was a professional singer, also had perfect pitch. I guess for singers that's pretty important.

I doubt that perfect pitch is more common or important among singers than among musicians generally. I used to sing in a professional choir. A few people had perfect pitch. It was good in some ways, as they would always have the starting pitch. Some of them had trouble making the little adjustments you need to blend with the overall sound, though. If there's a bit of pitch drift in a chorus, at a certain point you have to go with it, not stick to your own perfection. Or, if the conductor decided to take a whole piece up or down a half step, it would drive them crazy.

I can tell if a song is in a certain key if I have played a song in that key recently. I can usually pick out if something is in Bb (I play the blues a lot). Unfortunately, I was not blessed with perfect pitch. Although, your ears can be trained to at least hear the intervals and chord qualities. I am at least that far, but for the most part can't pick out what key a song is in on the spot.

No. Like most people, I have relative pitch to some extent, but not absolute pitch. Play something, then take it up a semitone, and I can recognize that it went up a half step. But whether that was from B to C, or C to Db, I'd have no idea at all.

I have been fortunate enough to be able to do all of the above, identify keys of songs, individual notes on the keyboard, ( I've been blindfolded to test this lol ), or indeed complex chords and passages in classical music. I have a feeling this also helped me with live transcribing of pieces. It kinda feels like a physical sense almost; you can envision yourself completing the same movement along with whatever key it falls on. The most annoying side effect of this, is of course you can really pick when something or someone is flat...

Interestingly enough, I always struggle with picking out male singers, as one of you mentioned earlier. I don't know what it is, but its like I just fail to pick what octave they're on.

Doriangrey, can you narrow the note or chord or key to one in one or two octaves??

No . I cant. I am not musically gifted or talented in any way. But I work hard at it so I can get to a level of ability to play piano to the point where other students are inspired by my hard work. That encourages them. I dont give up. even when something is where I am hitting a wall. I try something else or put it away for awhile to get back to it later from another angle. I am just an engineer who loves to learn to play piano in spare time.