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#All music keys in order how to#
#All music keys in order pdf#

Does it even make sense to think of this as being in one key?įor some tunes, it doesn’t really make sense to think of them in one single key. I have another post examining the implications of this idea, and what it means for modes.ġ0. My personal preference is to think of Sweet Home Alabama in G, because it’s easier that way.īut thinking of it in D is just as correct. If you do a google image search for “Sweet Home Alabama sheet music,” you’ll see that roughly half of the transcriptions show it in D, and half in G. Can this be written in more than one key? Here are the chords from John Mayer’s Badge & Gun:Īll of the chords are diatonic to G… except that A7 in measure 6.īut when we look at the commonly-occurring non-diatonic chords, we see that A7 isn’t entirely unexpected:Ĩ. Are most of the chords diatonic to a key, with some non-diatonic (but not entirely unexpected) chords sprinkled in? The band eventually does go to the G chord, but it takes them a minute and a half of this progression before they do.)ħ. (This example is from Dave Matthews Band’s #41. So even though there’s no G chord, it’s in the key of G. …you can see that the only key that has all of those chords diatonically is G: (Again, “diatonic” = only using notes from within the key-no outside notes.) Are all the chords diatonic to a certain key? When I see F-Fm, my brain goes right to “IV-iv in C.”Ħ. When I see Am-D, my brain goes straight to “ii-V in G.” You can also be on the lookout for other mini-progressions like ii-V or IV-iv. Is there another clear chordal movement that’s a key giveaway? If you see a set of chords that only has one dominant 7 among them, there’s a pretty good chance that that chord is the V.ĥ. If we look at the extended chords that show up diatonically ( diatonic = made up of only notes from within the key), we see that there’s only one that’s a dominant 7 chord: the V.

#All music keys in order pdf#

And of course if the song changes to a new key somewhere along the way, that’s going to complicate matters.įor a printable PDF of this chart, click here.

There are plenty of songs that purposely end on a chord other than the I (which gives the ending an unsettled feeling).

LOTS of songs don’t start on the I chord.

If you’re learning a song from a recording, or reading a chart written by a less-than-literate musician, you can look at the first & last chords of the song-they’re frequently the I chord. What are the first & last chords in the song? Of course, if someone says, “this is a blues in G” or “we’re playing Dock of the Bay, but in F,” you’ll obviously know what to do.ģ. F# and Gb are the same key, just with a different name (and different names for each of the notes). In this example, one flat means that the song is in F. On a chart written by a literate musician, there will be key signature-some number of sharps or flats between the clef and the time signature: Probably the easiest way to determine what key you’re in is when the written music tells you the key. I’m going to explain each of these in order, but I want to begin by saying that you should be going through this checklist in this order when trying to determine a song’s key.ġ.

Does it even make sense to think of this as being in one key?.

Can this be written in more than one key?.

Are most of the chords diatonic to a key, with some non-diatonic (but not entirely unexpected) chords sprinkled in?.

Are all the chords diatonic to a certain key?.

Is there another clear chordal movement that’s a key giveaway?.What’s the first & last chord in the song?.Grab the printable PDF chart with every chord in each key

With a little practice you’ll be able to take a snap “reading” of a song (or a section of a song). I trained my brain to do this, and you can too. Here’s a list of questions that will help you decide.Īlthough putting this in a checklist makes it seem really formal, this is something that will eventually happen automatically, in a matter of seconds. how all of this gets written down in a way that’s useful to you AND the musicians you collaborate with.īut I get it-today you’re in a hurry and you want to know: How do I figure out the key of a song?.

#All music keys in order how to#

how to speak the language of rhythm, and.

how chords are combined into progressions,.

what the “function” of each of those chords is,.

how to ID notes on your fretboard by their actual names,.

In GuitarOS: Practical Theory, we walk you through: