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Post by petite joueuse on Oct 29, 2006 18:14:04 GMT
A friend asked me this question this morning....and (to my shame) I wasn't able to give him an easy answer.
He wasn't convinced when I said that the Moonlight Sonata would sound very different if played in an "easier" key.
He also wasn't convinced when I said that different keys do actually have a different "feel"/"impression" or whatever.
But I couldn't give him any good layman's explanation.
So its over to you lot.......................
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Post by caz on Oct 29, 2006 19:06:37 GMT
On the piano it's due to equal temperament - all the keys ARE actually slightly different from each other.
Play him the Moonlight in D minor instead - yuk!
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Post by anacrusis on Oct 29, 2006 21:01:37 GMT
Hooray! A reason for all us non-absolute-pitch-ers to have unequal temperaments.......  |
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Post by Steve Hopwood on Oct 29, 2006 23:53:00 GMT
A friend asked me this question this morning....and (to my shame) I wasn't able to give him an easy answer. He wasn't convinced when I said that the Moonlight Sonata would sound very different if played in an "easier" key. He also wasn't convinced when I said that different keys do actually have a different "feel"/"impression" or whatever. But I couldn't give him any good layman's explanation. So its over to you lot....................... So far as I know, the only layman's explanation is that different keys have different 'colours' - exactly what you said. I have yet to meet someone who argued with me after demonstration that, for example, the opening of Chopin's Berceuse (Db) or Schubert's Gb Impromptu sounded anything other than pale and insipid when played in the natural keys. Of course, they may simply have been deferring to my experience. Happily, none of them have known that human key sense has changed over the centuries, and that we hear key colours in the 21st century differently to people in the 18th and 19th. I have no idea how I shall answer the objections of anyone who is armed with this knowledge.  |
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Post by Dulciana on Oct 30, 2006 0:51:11 GMT
Something that I find strange is that I am not even close to having perfect pitch, but yet I can quite often tell what key something is in, as long as it's harmonised. Does the "temperament" thing have anything to do with this? Why does a Db chord sound so warm?
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Post by Steve Hopwood on Oct 30, 2006 0:58:35 GMT
Something that I find strange is that I am not even close to having perfect pitch, but yet I can quite often tell what key something is in, as long as it's harmonised. Maybe that is because you have an instinctive feel for key colours. Maybe that is one of those, "Because it does" answers? It is probably all to do with how human ears\emotions perceive sounds and react to them. Any scientific elucidation available, AP and YAP? |
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Post by jod on Oct 30, 2006 8:29:26 GMT
During the 17th and 18th before equal temprament, different keys had different affections attached to them. Some were practical D major being for military and ceremonial music because Trumpets were tuned in D, others because of the individual charactaristics due to not squashing all semitones into exactly the same size. For example f minor was associated with horror and terror. c and g minor, pathos. F major Pastoral music. You can still see evidence of this as late as Beethoven, just look at his use of c minor for example. The rest is just a hangover from then.
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Post by petite joueuse on Oct 30, 2006 9:34:51 GMT
Thanks for your thoughts, folks!
It is an interesting question, isn't it?
The friend who posed the question is a keen jazz man - he described with great glee a jamming session he once heard (with Charlie Parker, I think???) where the music just sort of started up, but the keyboard player and the clarinettist seemed to be really struggling to follow the lead (who was on guitar). When they reached the end, the guitarist joked about them not keeping up...and the keyboardist muttered something about "weird key" - to which the guitarist replied "oh, you should have said - I could easily have used a capo"!
The whole concept of transposing instruments is another (related) topic I struggle to get my head around. As a pianist & bassoonist, I just play what's written - it all seems quite obvious. But in orchestra at the moment, the clarinettists are literally changing instruments between movements! Weird or what? I just can't imagine coming to orchestra with TWO (or more?) bassoons so I could play in different keys!
I do think different keys have different colours/flavours/feels to them.
Is the same true in other musical cultures? e.g. Japanese scales?
By the way, the friend in question is a top-notch mathematician, so if anyone could point me towards the mathematical/physics explanation, that might be very useful!
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