In today’s article we’re going to continue on to part 2 of last week’s post, “How to Choose the Perfect Key for Your Song”. As we discussed, you should put some real thought into your key choice because choosing the wrong one can result in hours of extra work trying to make your arrangement work with it, as if it were a musical jigsaw puzzle. In the second part of this article we’re going to look at the rest of the points you should consider when figuring out the perfect key for your song.
Chord voicings
When choosing the key for your song, make sure to take into consideration the chord voicings or chord inversions on the piano, guitar, or other song element playing chords. For example, an open A chord on guitar will sound very different from an A barre chord played high up on the neck. They’re the same three notes, but the range they’re in and their position within the chord will change the feel dramatically. The open A chord will sound full, lush, and powerful, while the A chord voicing high up on the neck will be more intense and piercing.
What does this have to do with your key choice? Let’s say you start writing a song in A major, and you’re playing all open chords on acoustic guitar. After you’ve written most of the melody, you realize that it’s actually a bit too low for your vocal range, and you feel most comfortable singing in Eb. The problem now is that you’ve built your whole song and arrangement around the big, open chords on guitar in A, and shifting up to Eb would force you to use mainly barre chords since the E, A, and B strings can’t be played open in this key. If you still wanted to play the open chords, you could use a capo and shift up to Eb, but now the chords sound thin and they’re clashing with the other instruments playing in the upper range. Now you find yourself spending additional hours figuring out new guitar voicings that will work in Eb, and potentially having to re-write the whole arrangement around the guitar.
This isn’t just a guitar problem either, although re-writing voicings often takes the longest for this instrument. If you’re writing out chords for piano, a string/horn section, or a synth pad, and you change the key halfway through the song, you’ll find yourself having to re-write them in order to make them fit with the new key. Sometimes it isn’t a big deal, but other times it can feel like you’re solving a musical jigsaw with several missing pieces.
If you’re starting a song and you just need to get some chords down to get the ideas flowing, by all means go ahead, but don’t fall in love with those voicings until you know that’s the key you want your song to be in. Save yourself the hassle and settle on a key before you start figuring out chord voicings.
Key “mood”
This is a much more subjective point to take into consideration that only you can decide as the writer. I can’t prescribe to you through my computer screen whether your song sounds better in F# or G, so you will have to use your own intuition and ear to decide what feels best. If you’re creating a MIDI demo in your DAW, you can simply select all the notes in your song and shift them up or down to hear what it sounds like in different keys. As you’ll notice, your song will take on a different emotion with each key. It will be very subtle, but if you close your eyes and listen, you will notice that for example it might sound brighter and more open in one key, and darker in another. F may sound warm and resonant, while E might sound light and and crisp; you get the idea.
When choosing a key, I recommend prioritizing its playability first, but if you have some leeway with your choice then I highly encourage you to dive deeper and find a key that is not only playable, but also sounds great for your music.
The importance of choosing your key early in the process
If you haven’t picked it up already from what you’ve read so far, the main theme of this article is that you need to choose the key to your song as early in the process as possible. One mistake I made as a neophyte songwriter was thinking that I could just start a song in C major and shift it to whatever key I wanted after finishing it. However, I slowly realized that I couldn’t do this without having to re-write the arrangement, since moving your song to another key means you’re shifting the melody, chord voicings, bass line, horn/string lines, and backup vocals to a different range that may be difficult or even impossible for them to perform. Furthermore, shifting the music to a much lower key can cause muddiness, while shifting to a higher key can sound thin and strained, so you will need to make adjustments to restore the frequency balance to what it was before the change.
As you can see now, moving your song to another key after you’re finished or even halfway through can be a real pain. This is why I strongly recommend you make a conscious effort in finding the perfect key for your song as early as possible in the process so you can avoid this headache. At the end of the day, a good song is a good song regardless of its tonal centre, but as we’ve learned, it can have a significant impact on the technical and musical qualities of your music that make it easier to perform and ultimately more enjoyable to listen to.