Working out a Major Key from a Melody
Lesson 3 from: Music Theory Essentials: Chords, Scales and ModesTomas George
Working out a Major Key from a Melody
Lesson 3 from: Music Theory Essentials: Chords, Scales and ModesTomas George
Lesson Info
3. Working out a Major Key from a Melody
Lessons
Scales Introduction
03:08 2Working out a Major Scale
06:45 3Working out a Major Key from a Melody
05:51 4Major Keys and Scales
01:54 5Major Scale on a Score
02:56 6Triads
03:37 7Inversions
03:21 8Working out the Chords in a Major Scale
09:27Different Ways to Write out Chords
04:11 10Working out Major and Minor Triads
07:01 11Diminished and Augmented Triads
05:22 127th Chords
12:16 13Extended Chords
06:34 14Suspended Chords
06:02 15The Circle of 5ths
12:48 16How to Change Key
14:54 17Natural Minor Scale
11:21 18Chords in the Minor Scale
05:59 19Harmonic Minor Scale
07:15 20Melodic Minor Scale
11:12 21Modes
03:54 22Ionian Mode
00:47 23Dorian Mode
03:14 24Phrygian Mode
03:14 25Lydian Mode
01:21 26Mixolydian Mode
02:11 27Aeolian Mode
01:03 28Locrian Mode
03:56 29Section introduction
00:17 30Song Analysis 1 - Capsize
15:25 31Song Analysis 2 - Floating
18:07Lesson Info
Working out a Major Key from a Melody
Hi. In this lecture, we're going to look at working out a major key from a melody. So here's just a quick four bar melody I just wrote. I am using the digital audio workstation Logic Pro where I can swap between the score editor and the piano roll editor for learning music theory. I do recommend knowing how to read the score editor and also the piano roll editor. However, I do know there are fantastic composers that just use score editor and also fantastic composers that just use the piano roll editor. So don't worry if you can only use one of them, but for producing modern day electronic music, a lot of people will use primarily the piano roll editor and also for composing classical music or orchestral music. I know a lot of people will primarily use the score editor. So don't worry too much if you know only one of these for now. So I'm just going to play about this melody and then let's work it out and analyze this melody and find out what major key this melody is in. So it can seem ...
quite complex at first. But this is a very simple melody. It sticks to all the rules, all the notes fit in a major key and we're going to work it out now. So this is why it sounds quite normal, quite boring because we're not really trying anything exciting here. This is just a melody that fits in a major key. But to start with, it's good to know the rules. It's good to know how to work this out. So we have the number of notes here. So this is the melody here. The first thing I'm going to do in this piano roll editor is actually write out the notes of the melody. OK. So let's type in these notes that we used in the melody. So I'm just going to simply look at the notes and then type them in. So the first one here is a G, then we have a B, then we have here. AC so GB CD, I'm just going to put these in first. And the way we can work this out is by looking at the tonal and semi tonal movements between each note. It's similar to working out a puzzle. We can use this to work out which pattern or which major key it is we're actually working with. OK. And next, we have ne and then we have this f shop and then up again to a G which is the same as the first note. So let's just say for argument's sake, we think this is in D major, which isn't a bad guess. Let's have a look. So remember the pattern, tone tone semitone, tone, tone tone semitone. So we're going to go through that pattern now and then see if it matches with these notes here. So we have d to start with and then we go up a tone to e just this note here. Then we go up another tone to F sharp, then we go up to a semitone, remember tone tone semitone to a G. This all fits so far. And then going down here, we go up a tone to an A that isn't a here. Don't worry, we can work this out even if all the notes of the scale aren't there. OK? So remember tone tone, we have a B and then up again a tone to a C# which we don't have, we have AC we have this note here, not this one. So it's not going to be D OK. Let's go across to an E. So we have E and then above, we have a tone which is an F sharp above this. We have another tone which is a G sharp, which is not what we have. We have a G, OK? We could go to an F sharp. We can't have F because you know there's an F sharp because the first note would be a tone. So it's not going to be F, we could try F sharp. The first one's a tone which would bring us to a G sharp. So F sharp here, tone above this is a G sharp which won't fit. OK. Now, let's have a look at the key of G. So I've just changed the octave of the keyboard so we can see what's going on. So we have a G here. A tone above A G will give us an A, we don't have an A here. So let's not worry about that. For now, a tone above this will give us A B. So we have a B here, a semitone above this will give us ac which is the note we have here. So it's all looking good a tone above this will give us ad so we have ad here a tone above this will give us an E another tone will give us an F sharp which is a note we have here. And then finally, a semitone will give us a G and that's it. Tone tone, semitone, tone, tone tone semi Toone is G major. There are a few other obvious signs. For example, this does resolve to G and a lot of the time the tonic will be the major key as well. So this melody starting and kind of resolving around G does give us a strong indication that it could be in G major. However, it's definitely worth going through and practicing these patterns, having a look at melodies and even writing melodies and then going back and analyzing to find out what major key this was actually in. So that's just the way we can work out what major key a melody is in by using that pattern tone, tone semitone, tone, tone, tone semitone. So thank you for watching this lecture just about working out the major key of a melody.
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