[F_minor] RE: Key associations.

["Robert Merkin" <bobmerk@earthlink.net>]

Alwin -- THANKS! You RAWK!!!

Bob


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----- Original Message ----- 
From: Alwin Tong 
To: bobmerk@earthlink.net;F_MINOR@EMAIL.RUTGERS.EDU
Sent: 10/17/2006 2:44:42 PM 
Subject: RE: Key associations.



Hi Robert, I simply let you know that you are not the only one who is emotionally-impaired in this forum. we are with you!!!

As a supposedly "musician" , i have tried to think about the issue that you mentioned a fair bit...

from what i can gather, pitch is relatively an arbitrary thing.

as an eg. of that - n.american orchestras are prone to tuning in 440, while european ones often tune at 444, and the whole system itself has been moving up slowly ever since temperment became a standardized thing (around bach's time).

and if you've stuck it out through some music theory, you will know that the 12 key system is supposed to be symmetric like a circle. (ie. there are twelve keys, and any piece can be transposed through all twelve keys - for instance mary had a little lamb or the 9th symph can be played in all keys), then there technically should not be a beginning to the whole thing.

but for a symmetric system - the keyboard is an awfully assymmetric piece of furniture.

It shows a huge preference for the key of c major (as all the white keys on a piano, or black keys on a harpsichord), a Very Huge preference for Cmajor in fact, and almost all musicians start learning c major first. and i think herein lies the "key" to why moods maybe attached to keys.

i believe after the years, of playing c major, what happens is that some people's ears and their theory minds, become "atuned" to C, an arbitrary blip on the circle, that everything else is judged in relation to it.

in this way, it is very easy to see flat keys (such as both f (1 flat) and fminor (4 flats) ) as sadder, or more somber, as they are both moving downwards in key relative to cmajor (you can think of it as -1 for f major, and -4 for fminor). for the same reason, keys like e major tend to be bright (+4).

people such as beethoven (eb being his heroic key) and scriabin (key colour) tended to use keys in this way, probably for their own flow of ideas, as each key would be a touch stone, like a smell can be, while Bach, would openly transcribe pieces back and forth among key indistinguishably..

anycase, i really think it has something to do with the layout of the keyboard, and the fact that many musicians are made to learn c major for the early part of our lives.

*of the minor (sadness) and major (happiness), the answer is actually quite a bit simpler (and more solid), in that a major key has a harmony where the 3rd of the chord is more "in phase" (lower in harmonic series) than a minor 3rd which is used in a minor key.  (** the harmonic series is like a ladder of consonance to dissonance). this means that the major 3rd clashes less against the other chord notes. and just like how families work, less clashing equals more happiness.

getting ahead of myself, but i hope that helps in some way to your question :)

please feel free to email me, should any of it be unclear / wrong etc. 
i truly like exploring music theory ideas and wondered about this one often, so it is glad to hear other people writing about it too.

kindly from, alwin
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