{"id":4684,"date":"2021-09-09T21:34:06","date_gmt":"2021-09-10T01:34:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jimhaku.com\/blog\/?p=4684"},"modified":"2021-09-09T21:40:40","modified_gmt":"2021-09-10T01:40:40","slug":"how-many-keys-are-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jimhaku.com\/blog\/how-many-keys-are-there\/","title":{"rendered":"How many keys are there?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/E3vYVGMgZYY?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Here&#8217;s a clip of Victor Wooten explaining a very basic concept of music theory that is not always explained so simply. The answer you get is easy once you know, but it&#8217;s not the intuitive answer. Even he got it wrong at first. Why? Because in traditional music theory there are 6 keys that overlap:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jimhaku.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Screenshot-507.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"527\" height=\"589\" src=\"https:\/\/www.jimhaku.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Screenshot-507.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-4687\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.jimhaku.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Screenshot-507.png 527w, https:\/\/www.jimhaku.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Screenshot-507-268x300.png 268w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 527px) 100vw, 527px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>(this image from the circle of fifths wiki does not even bother to name a\u266f and a\u266d&nbsp;which is&#8230;interesting)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These keys, disregarding the sharp\/flat system, contain the same notes. Sure, if you are intentionally doing something clever with modulation in a piece, like going around the Circle, you would never go from E to C\u266d in your head or on paper, but the sound is no different in equal temperament. (Just noticed I&#8217;ve been spelling &#8220;temperament&#8221; wrong for as long as I&#8217;ve been using it. Never heard the &#8220;a&#8221; pronounced, that&#8217;s something new.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This matters (to me) because as I&#8217;ve said in the previous posts, there&#8217;s nothing inherently &#8220;natural&#8221; to the &#8220;natural note&#8221;. There&#8217;s only the note you start on and the intervals. Take the point that modes are not keys but scales. If you are playing in C, you can start playing a C scale melody but let&#8217;s say you switch to playing the Dorian mode. The key hasn&#8217;t changed, you are still playing entirely on the white keys, but the tonal center has, and the intervals of the scale have. That&#8217;s a difference you can hear. There&#8217;s a game you can play with traditional music theory that I&#8217;ve come to appreciate more than dismiss the more I get into it, but the average person (non-musicians; people without perfect pitch) really are never going to. That&#8217;s fine but it&#8217;s not the thing I&#8217;m interested in. Hopefully I can spend more time on interesting things in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s a clip of Victor Wooten explaining a very basic concept of music theory that is not always explained so simply. The answer you get is easy once you know, but it&#8217;s not the intuitive answer. Even he got it wrong at first. Why? Because in traditional music theory there are 6 keys that overlap: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[599],"tags":[635,994],"class_list":["post-4684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a0","tag-music-theory","tag-victor-wooten"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1m3oy-1dy","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimhaku.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimhaku.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimhaku.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimhaku.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimhaku.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4684"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimhaku.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4690,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimhaku.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4684\/revisions\/4690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimhaku.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimhaku.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimhaku.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}