Diagram Chord

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What key is a song in?

Like every musician, also every guitar player wants to have perfect pitch, play by ear or easily determine what key a song is in. There are many ways to find the key of a song depending on what you have in your hand;
a music sheet with standart notation (time signature, key signature, accidentals...), just a tab of a song, or even just a record.

The first thing to help you while determining what key a song is in is the key signature. You have to know how to read sheet music and what the key signature means. The key signature is the number of sharps or flats that appear immediately after the clef.

For key signatures with sharps, the first sharp is placed on F line (for the key of G major/E minor). Subsequent additional sharps are added on C, G, D, A, E and B. For key signatures with flats, the first flat is placed on the B line, with subsequent flats on E, A, D, G, C and F. There are 15 different key signatures, including the "empty" signature of C major/A minor. Please look at the simple key signature worksheet.


You can see the key signatures and related keys above. I think you have noticed that each key signature refers two keys. For example one key signature for G major and E minor, one key signature for D major and B minor and so on. These key pairs are called as relative keys (relative minor or relative major of each others). Because two tones have exactly the same notes you can ask "How can I determine whether the tone is a minor or a major?" At this point you can check the major and minor interval rules and the chords used. Or just listen to the sound; if it sounds happy and cheerful probably it is a major and if it sounds sad and blue it is probably a minor.

Determining what key a song is in by ear requires ear training(or talent) and a little musical knowledge. Try to find the note which the melody keeps resolving to. This note called "root note". You can feel it, every time the melody reaches that certain note you feel relaxed and music resolves.

Play the song which you are trying to find the key of and play single notes on the fretboard until you find the one note that sounds best with the song. If you are having trouble finding it you may listen to bass notes. It will help.

You can test your "root note" by using your guitar to play a major scale in the "root note" key, while the target song is playing. If it sounds fine, your root note is correct. If not try the minor scale.

Leading tone (leading note) is very important while determining what key a song is in. Leading tone points to the root note (tonic note). It is the seventh tone or degree of a scale that is a half tone below the tonic; a subtonic. Leading tone leads or resolves to the tonic. You also can feel the leading note while playing your guitar. When you play the leading note the music gains a tension and wants to resolve and when you play the tonic you can feel the resolving.

Take a look at the piece of music above. What key is the song in?

There must be a leading tone to the tonic if it is in a certain key. Using the key signatures chart above you can easily see that the excerpt should be in F major or in D minor. F major has a leading tone of E and D minor has a leading tone of C#. Because there is no C# in this sample we can say that the excerpt certainly in F major.

I hope that now you have an idea how to tell what key a song is in.

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Guitar Tapping Tips And Techniques

Although made popular recently by Eddie VanHalen, guitar tapping or right hand ‘legatos’ is a technique players have been executing for years. Country players know the benefit of laying down a nice subtle lead and just putting in those quick hammers with clear guitar tapping. And while it’s not the easiest thing, guitar finger tapping techniques are really nothing much more then fast hammer on and a pull offs. Whether you use your middle finger or your first, most times you can hold the pick as usual to execute your guitar tapping and get the speed and positioning essential to good guitar tapping techniques. But like anything else, guitar tapping takes practice and patience.

Since this is a highly specialized, yet popular way of playing we hear a lot of player’s guitar tapping these days…and just as many tapping badly. Especially when a guitar is cranked through distortion, a whole host of extra noises will come out if the player’s guitar finger tapping techniques aren’t the cleanest. An important trick to ‘clean-up’ when you are cranked through that Marshall Stack and you’re in “overdrive”, is to rest the back of your right hand on the lower strings for muting; what you want to avoid is these string making a lot of extra noise while you get that guitar tapping in one steady movement. Of course, if you’re a rock player you are most likely already dreaming of the all-too flashy ‘cross-handed tapping’ but this is so impractical it only ever works when playing live (and even then it is a hard to get those guitar tapping progressions cooking in this way!) Admittedly though, this particular type of guitar tapping, above all other types of guitar finger tapping techniques, creates a truly distinct tone.

There are hundreds of videos and books that show guitar tapping tips, but as it is with everything else, you can’t even begin to understand how guitar tapping works until you get up and do it yourself. Although modern listeners have been conditioned to want speed like Eddie V., it is more important to get the strong and clear sound of each note then to sacrifice technique for potential sloppiness. Guitar finger tapping techniques are only good if you can do them; nothing sounds worse then reaching for a flashy technique and not being able to pull it off. As with everything else you learn on guitar, if you mater a technique on acoustic then you can feel all that more confident trying it on electric.

Playing a difficult and flashy exercise, such as guitar tapping or lightening fast arpeggios, sometimes seem to be easier on an electric; you get-off on the sound you are creating, the noise, but don’t catch nuisances or mistakes. Try tapping on an acoustic guitar (or you want a big challenge-try guitar tapping on an acoustic bass!) Guitar finger tapping is hard on an acoustic; cross-handed guitar tapping is almost impossible (it takes a ton of strength and precision), but master guitar tapping on an acoustic and you’ll find you are that much more prepared for what you might do on your electric.

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