In this lesson, you’ll learn two easy ways to figure out the key of a piece of music. In the first example, we’ll start with a chord chart and use the natural pattern of chords in a key to figure out which key we are playing in. In the second example, we’ll use our major scale to find the key of a piece of music while listening to the track.
These aren’t just ‘hacks’. You’re going to learn how to use a couple of bits of music theory that you can build on in the future. But today, these tricks are going to help you start having more fun on the guitar immediately!
These tricks aren’t magic. Sometimes, you will come across a chord progression that uses advanced harmony and doesn’t behave according to these rules. However, the strategies you’ll learn in this lesson will work 80% of the time.
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It’s frustrating when you’re looking at a chord chart and have no idea how to figure out the key of the song. Maybe it doesn’t tell you the key at the top of the chart. Or, maybe it does, but something isn’t quite sounding right and you think whoever wrote the chart made a mistake.
Unfortunately, this happens more than you’d think. The problem with a lot of the chord chart websites is that they are full of user-generated content. These users don’t necessarily have a great understanding of music theory. Even the most highly rated chord chart can have mistakes. Being able to look at the chord chart yourself and easily figure out the key will help you see through these errors and enjoy the process of learning the song.
There are many reasons you might want to figure out the key of a song just by listening. Maybe there isn’t a chord chart and you need a starting point so you know which chords you’re listening for. Maybe you’re practising improvisation and need to know which scales you should be using to shred straight fire. Maybe you’re trying to learn the vocal melody (which is a great way to get ideas for more melodic playing by the way). Whatever the reason, this trick will get you there (80% of the time because we don’t do magic remember?)
How To Find The Key Of A Song Completely By Ear [no Perfect Pitch]
First of all, you’ll need to know how to play your major scale. I recommend using the shape on the top string set for what we’re going to be doing here.
This shape occurs in the top half of Pattern 1. Think of it as the classic minor pentatonic scale with a couple of added major notes.
Am and C major are relative keys. This means they share the exact same notes but simply start in different positions. The same notes, played from two different starting points, give us two very different sounding scales. Putting the same notes in a different context gives us an entirely different vibe!
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For what we’re doing here, this just means that it doesn’t matter if a song is in a major key or its relative minor. We’ll still be playing over it using the exact same scale. Even if it does happen to be in a minor key, using the major scale to figure it out will produce exactly the same result.
We can see this a little more easily if we spread the notes across one string. In the example below you can also see that there are two places along the high E string where we could play a 1 34 pattern. One of these places will be the correct position for the major scale. The other position will sound bad (it will have a note that doesn’t belong in the major scale). We just need to try both positions and pick the one that sounds good.
These tricks are two super useful tools to have in your musical toolbox. You might need to try them a few times to get the hang of them. But, once you’ve got the process down, you’ll find you’re using them all the time!There are many ways to figure out the key that a song is in, but when it comes to using just your ear and your guitar, the quickest way that I have found is what I refer to as the “Pentatonic Box Method”.
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After you find the “box” that works the best, you can determine the key by where your first finger and pinky finger are located.
Regardless of whether you are viewing a particular key from the major perspective or the minor perspective, there are exactly 3 major chords and 3 minor chords found within each key. The circle of 5ths groups these 6 chords together for each key like so:
One you know the key that you are in, along with the 3 major and 3 minor chords found within that key, it makes figuring out songs by ear MUCH EASIER! Rather then trying to just guess which chords are thrown together at random, you instead have a great point to start from with the 6 “in-key” chords.
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Within each grouping of 6 on the circle of fifths, you can apply a Roman Numeral to each chord depending on its’ position. Major chords get an uppercase roman numeral, and minor chords get a lowercase roman numeral…
The more songs you learn, the more you will recognize common chord progressions being used very often. One of the most common chord progressions that you will hear in modern music is the “I – V – vi – IV” Progression. Try it out, and you will see what I’m talking about!
Out-of-key chords (aka. “non-diatonic” chords) usually aren’t just selected at random. More often then not, they are “borrowed” from parallel keys. Let’s say that our original starting key is C major/A minor:
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Assuming you are referring to this key as the key of C major, if you wanted to “borrow” some chords from the parallel key, you would look to the key of C minor:
Assuming you are referring to this key as the key of A minor, if you wanted to “borrow” some chords from the parallel key, you would look to the key of A major:
Within these parallel keys, you will often find the major chords being used more often. Not to say that minor chords are
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“borrowed” from parallel keys. It’s just that “borrowed major chords” tend to be used more. Therefore, within the key of C major/A minor, you will often hear these chords thrown into the mix:
*Note: If you are looking at this key from the minor perspective, which in this case would be A minor, and you are treating the A minor chord as the “i chord”, this chord would considered the “V chord”.
This may be overwhelming at first, but if you just focus on a few positions (namely the “home box” and the “A-string home box”), then you will find that you are able to figure out some of Slash’s licks and solos:
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Between just these 2 positions, you will find that you can learn A LOT of solos. All you need to know is what key you are in. From there, just simply apply the pattern(s), and you are left with a nice road map of notes to choose from!
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