Greetings to all the wonderful musical hearts on here.

I need to know and so I ask: If you compose a melody in your head consciously or subconsciously, how do you, later on, determine the right key to play that melody on?
Now this melody may be played using any of the 12 chromatic pitches as its tonic. So what criteria should be used in picking the tonic?

Why did Pachelbel play the Canon in the key of D?

Why did James Horner choose to begin Celine Dion's "My heart Will Go On" in the Key of E major?

Why did Toby Gadd and Stacy Ferguson decide that Gmajor was the appropriate key for “Big Girls Don’t Cry”?

I believe that you understand my questions to a degree despite my possibly poor expressions?

What criteria is used to determine the APPROPRIATE tonic for a newly composed melody?

Do you pick the key (tonic) for the melody because it allows for a pitch range that the singer/player will be comfortable with?

Are there keys that are more suited to slower songs and others more suited to quicker tempos?

Is the criteria for choosing the tonic determined by the mood you intend to create? (i.e. beside the use of major and minor melodies, does the choice of the tonic also help in creating the mood)?

Or, do I compose melodies and say: “goddamit, I’m gonna play this on B! And that on G! And the other on E!” Without any informed reason for this decisions.

So my mind recently conceived a melody. It sounds great in the key of E, it feels different but beautiful in the key of D, it sounds sort of flat in the key of C (but I may be wrong I do not have those trained ears), it sounds good in the key of G!!!
Ha!
You see my confusion! How do I decide the most appropriate key?

Thanks as I anticipate your mind-expanding responses.

 

I do alot of hip hop and electronic music, so I usually like starting points in heavy bass ranges such as E up to G. Also I feel like 7ths and 9th chords should always be played with emotional type music. Such as R&B, Soul etc.. Just makes things more relative imo.

 

Interesting! So the ranges E –F-F#-G are more suited for bass heavy music.

 

Interesting topic! I would also like to know more about this.

 

If the melody is going to be a vocal part, the key is often determined by what is comfortable and sounds good for that singer's voice. Other than that, what key you decide to use as a tonic reference depends on how you are going to arrange the song, and each key has it's own timbre, no matter what instruments are used. And each Instrument has a range that has a top and a bottom limit within that key. But that timbre is different, depending also on said instruments. For instance-I like the way guitars sound all jingly jangly in the key of B, but I like the power crunch of key of E for guitar power chords. Some keys are just easier to play on different instruments. Horn players tend to prefer different keys than fretted instrument players. For an orchestra, it is said that Beethoven was fond of the sound of Eb major. Timbre is a word that, in English, is very hard to define or pin down, but has a lot to do with the over all sound from one key to another.

 

Last edited: Jan 12, 2016

Wow! Thank you so much rhythmatist. So there are a lot of factors to be carefully considered when choosing a key for a composition.
So whoever arranges the composition is in the best position to determine the most suitable key that will be convenient for all players/singers involved and also suitable for the desired timbre of the music. Wow!

 

@Third World Kid below are some very useful resources that tie various keys to emotions and moods. you might find what you are looking for in them, they are worth a quick read. Hope you find them helpful.

Scales and Emotions
Characteristics of Musical Keys
Emotions of the Musical Keys

 

It is insightful isn't it, Musical Psychiatry.

my favorite;
D# minor: Feelings of the anxiety of the soul's deepest distress, of brooding despair, of blackest depression, of the most gloomy condition of the soul. Every fear, every hesitation of the shuddering heart, breathes out of horrible D# minor. If ghosts could speak, their speech would approximate this key

EDIT: (It was written in 1806 though)
From Christian Schubart's Ideen zu einer Aesthetik der Tonkunst (1806) translated by Rita Steblin

 

As an exercise use something like ChordPulse to enter a chord progression and scroll though the various keys.

 

A lot of dance producers follow this guideline (copy/paste):

 

I think he is alluding to the fact that a different tone of voice will convey a different meaning, if somewhat poetically

 

as above, did anyone say how playable it would be for some instruments. so it depends on how your going to use that melody ultimately as well as it's color, yep some people see different keys in a different colour, you can research it

 

Usually, great producers/composers feature a relative pitch/pitch-perfect hearing ability. So that way they listen to the singer (in case the singer also wrote the song) and they build up the chords around his/her vocals (in case he didn't play any reference chords already when he wrote the song).

Anyway,
If you want to compose a lead melody out of your head using your vocals as the instrument and wanna find out the key you sang in, you can use Melodyne for that. You must first set Melodyne to show the scale, by clicking: EDIT tab -> Scale Editor -> Selection and Master Tuning. Once this setting is engaged, record your vocals, load Melodyne, press Transfer button and at the end of the "Transfer" process you'll see the key of the melody you sang popping up automatically in the left side of the window.

It's funny how people overlook the technical possibilities these days.

 

I gotcha, I thought he was referring to the mood set by the key. It is still interesting how some interpret the tone or color/mood of a key and put it into a category like they did in some of those articles. I have used those myself in writing music at times.

 

Where'd you get this from? I've noticed this while analyzing plenty song harmonics/melodies

 

Thank you for the mind-expanding response. Those links, very informative and interesting. I shall study them extensively.

 

Maybe useful:
F-->https://audiosex.pro/threads/my-new-tune.21228/ (Wins)
G-->https://audiosex.pro/threads/my-other-new-tune.21247/
Db-->https://audiosex.pro/threads/my-new-tune-in-db-maj-scale.21266/

 

@Zenarcist, I definitely will try that exercise out. Thank you.

@D-Music, enlightening stuff there, gratitude.

@Resonator, I certainly will research that. Used to see sounds as colours when I was a little child, don't know how I lost that when I began to grow up. Too much heat perhaps.

 

@foster911, interesting, going through them now.