Keys in Music - What are they, how many keys are there and how do we identify them?

Most of us, if not all, have heard the word - Key, as related to music before but not all of us actually know what a key really means. Many of us know it as just some stuff represented by alphabets - C, A, B, F sharp, blah blah blah, that musicians use when singing. As a musician, i made this post to educate those of us on steemit who are not so familiar with the concept of keys.

What is a Key?

A key is what identifies the group of notes or scale with which a musical piece was basically composed. For example, a piece composed in key G would have the notes - G, A, B, C, D, E, F# which are the notes of its scale and it’s from this scale the chords used in the piece are built.

A scale is a set of musical notes or pitches grouped together in a graduating sequence.
A chord is any harmonic set of pitches consisting of two or more notes that are heard as if sounding simultaneously.

Every key features a root note in its scale. The root note is the note on which the scale of the key is built. It is normally the first note of the scale and bears the same name as the key. The root note of any key is also the tonal note from which the tonic chord is formed.

In music, keys and notes are represented by alphabets e.g D, E, F.

A key could be in the major mode or minor mode. This brings us to major scale and minor scale. A song composed in the major mode uses the notes of the major scale and that composed in a minor mode uses the notes of the minor scale. For example, a song in the key of C Major uses the notes of the C major scale – C, D, E, F, G, A, B and that in the key of C minor uses the notes of the C natural minor scale – C, D, Eb, F, G, Ab, Bb.

When naming chords, major chords are represented with an upper case M while minor chords with a lower case m.

How many Keys are there in Music?

There are basically 12 keys in music, though we can say 24 if we pay attention to the concept of major and minor modes by subdividing every key into majors and minors. Five of them (the 12 keys) can b named in two ways; either we call them flats or we call them sharps. This can be best explained using a piano.
In the piano, the sharps and flats are represented by the black keys as shown in the image above.

Sharps are represented by the symbol - # while flats by the symbol - b.

A key is said to be sharpened when we move directly to the next key after it and flattened when we move directly to the previous key below it. C, D, F, G, A have sharps represented like this - C#, D#, F#, G#, A# while E and B do not. and D, E, G, A, B have flats represented like this Db, Eb, Gb, Ab, Bb while C and F do not.

Putting all this together, the 12 keys in music are: C, C#/Db, D, D#/Eb, E, F, F#/Gb, G, G#/Ab, A, A#/Bb, B.

How do we Identify the Key of a Music Piece or Song?

This can be a hard thing to do as the concept surrounding it is kind of complicated. The basic method of finding the key of song is by listening to the song and locating its tonal note on a musical instrument.

The tonal note provides a sense of arrival and rest when playing or listening to music. It acts like the center of the music, like the whole music is revolving around it. We could describe this with the concept of the gravitational force of the earth where objects floating around it tends to be pulled to the center until they come to a state of rest on the surface. The tonic note is regarded as that point of rest while the other notes used as the point where the music is floating.
It is common to hear song begin and end with the tonal note.

Finding the tonal note is finding the key as the tonal note is the root note of the key.

Some music professionals might not need a musical instrument to locate the key of a particular song as they have trained their ears to differentiate the sound of the different keys.

I hope this post has been informative. You can please upvote, comment and resteem for support.

Thanks.