20. Do Keys have Characteristics, Emotions or Moods?

This video explores the myth that different keys have different characteristics, emotions or moods - C Major is happy, A minor is solemn, etc. Before equal temperament tuning was adopted, different keys did actually sound different. Each key was out of tune in its own specific way. But with the adoption of equal temperament this is no longer the case. All keys are now equally out of tune and so sound relatively equivalent.

[limlim]

Fascinating! The different tuning systems would also change the meaning of whatever notation system they used, if read by someone unfamiliar with the original tuning. That explains a lot about why so much of music has been lost to history.
Thank you for this fascinating video.

[Xzy_]

I think that the supposed unique colours of different keys are A: personal, and B: dependant on context and prior experience.
To people saying 'listen to this piece then hear it in another key', of course, if you hear one key then hear a different key, there will be a shift in colour, no one is arguing that, such is the case even if you are merely used to hearing a piece in one key, then hear it in another.
People can have preconceived notions about certain keys for any number of reasons - how comfortable it is to play on your instrument, how resonant it is on your instrument (less so for piano), certain pieces you have heard/played in those keys, perhaps you assign a kind of simplicity to C bcs it has no accidentals, leading to an experience of purity or clarity.
Ppl say the pitch of a key may also have an effect, but i think this is only rly relevant with large shifts up or down.
Thats not to say these are improper or redundant ways of thinking, i think it allows for nuanced musical understanding. For example, 'O Polichinelo' by Lobos uses an almost comically simple melody in C against a rather absurd accompaniment to make a sarcastic, mocking feel.
People are gonna feel differently abt the keys whether u like it or not, but if we, as a musical collective, had taken A as 420 instead of 440, i dont think anything would have changed.

[carlhilber]

I will say that different keys do have different brightnesses. If you play a dark and sad song up a few keys it will sound more angelic and bitter sweet. For instance playing a single note vs playing an octive produces a different mood despite being perfectly 1/2 constontant as the other note changes the bringtness of the note. Furthermore on a piano white and black keys have slightly different timbres which can produce slightly different feelings, likewise the arrangement of white and black keys can make certain hand movements more intuitive and encourage different choices in the writing process.

If consonance and dissonance were the only factors that determined emotion and mood, we would just write everything in whole key scales and only use black keys for out of scale notes/ chords.

[sisfantasto]

It really depends on the individual person.
I for example hate C Major!
I find it patronizing and arrogant.
G minor on the other hand is for me home. Smooth, gentle and caring.
I feel more at home in the minor keys, they help expand my improvisation fantasies.

[submeg]

Such a great playlist here! This has helped explain a few ideas that I didn't even know I wanted explained. Thank you!

[unsatura]

"equally out of tune ... " lol, i remember a story my teacher told us, moving to a big city from a small canadian town, she was shocked by how "out of tune" japanese music was, and it took her several years to learn to appreciate the fact that, how to make the shakuhachi go out of tune was probably the most important feature in that art form ... i once asked my chinese opera friend if the kun opera modulates according to the singers' range like i suspect peking opera does ... he said, no, whatever flute the maestro has, everyone confirms to it, and so, to me, the singers often struggle to fit into the range, even if one would expect those that cannot fit have already been eliminated at the beginning .... and art always finds a way : how a woman struggles with a range first adopted for men became a feature of contemporary kun opera artistry .... "out of tune" is so relative ...

[kenneth]

Yes, it's all about the degrees of dissonance. I wonder how much of the richness of expression we've lost through leveling the playing fields. But this also begs the question of residual memory: how foreign keys sound the further away from established home key, similar to degrees of the scale sound to the tonic.

[zvonimirtosic]

I don't think it's a myth. Regardless of Equal Temperament Tuning, music keys must have a different mood, because a great part of the feeling is hidden in the frequency of the tonic, and how the next notes (frequencies) within the key are dispersed, which notes (frequencies) are there, and .. which frequencies are absent. Oftentimes sense of absence of certain sounds (frequencies), and the absence of the mutual interactions which absent notes could form (certain delightful harmonies and harmonics), can cause us to feel uneasy. We quickly understand certain music is depriving us of optimistic sensations, which the auditory pathway in our brain analyses as part of the overall sound analysis. It is a very complex bio-neural process that involves several different brain departments, including the centres of awareness, sensory perception, balance, and memory, which are receiving, analysing and then interpreting the context, influencing how we 'hear' and 'feel' about all of that.

[nozominozomi]

The tones sound different, even in equal temperament. Literally not a single piano key in the dominant position conveys a mood identical to the dominant minor G-sharp in the key of C-sharp minor. I can't imagine the Moonlight Sonata with the ta-ta-taa motif sounding somewhere on a different frequency and conveying the same mood.

[BKT]

This video is mostly aimed at specific frequencies / tuning systems, but I'd say what mood a chord has in general also depends on the context and some other factors like someone's personal perception formed over the years.
And it seems to matter as well in what order you play the chords in an arpeggio for example, this also comes back in theories regarding subharmonics (the series you'd get if you would go down in frequencies instead of upwards, the first chord from C appearing would then be an F minor but it can be seen as a C major chord going downwards).
And it also depends on how they're voiced, etc. etc. :)

[eboone]

as someone with good pitch memory (NOT perfect pitch, yet similar in practice), different keys absolutely have different characteristics.

I have memorized the sound of all 12 notes via 12 different songs* across multiple years, so these notes sort of carry the meaning of the songs I learned them from.

For example, I learned G from Bach's Little Fugue in G Minor, so songs in G minor remind me of the powerful and regal quality of that fugue.

F♯, however, I learned from Caramelldansen, which actually isn't even tuned in A=440hz since it's a nightcore remix. So, songs in F♯ sound very uplifting as I recall listening to Caramelladansen as a child, plus the song is literally tuned higher.


*actually 11 songs, since I didn't need a song to learn C

[willplaymusic]

I loved this series! Thank you so much!

[dhruvsoni]

I think its not a specific mood, its more like group of moods or various moods that a key contains because every single chord has its own different flavour and a chord progression can be like a journey, a group of moods like from optimistic to meloncholic and serious to again optimistic.

[SuperHyperExtra]

In well-temperament, it was possible to play in all twelve keys (Werckmeister, Kinrberger, etc.). Some would say itʼs best of both world: playability in 12 keys with individuality of each key, superior in a sense to equal temperament...

[TofuTofu]

This video is completely wrong (aside from some good explanations of the mathematics of tuning). Different keys absolutely have different "moods" because individual notes sound qualitatively different as if they were different colours. I like to think of a key as a certain combination of colours.

To expand on the colour analogy, red light looks qualitatively different to blue light when they are just different wavelengths i.e frequencies. Similarly, different notes have different "colours". On a piano, I would say white keys generally sound brigher whereas black keys sound warmer.

Play any piece on the piano (which will have equal temperament) in different keys and they will convey a slightly different mood.

Lastly, for a simple illustration, listen to the same piece of music in modern tuning and in baroque tuning (a bit flatter). They absolutely have different qualities/moods despite even being in the same key. Walk That Bass seems to understand this towards the end of the video but somehow draws the wrong conclusion.

(In case you doubt me, I have perfect pitch.)

[QueenFlower]

i think "key moods" make sense to someone with perfect pitch. isnt perfect pitch a kind of memory? it makes sense if they connect certain frequencies to something like emotions. is like a reference. if the key note reminds them of a certain emotion then they know in what key the music is. just like with colors.

[hugoclarke]

The well tempered tuning systems may have presented the ideal ratio of "in tune/out of tune" before we sterilised it with out modern mindset. Of course, it was not possible to cripple nature entirely, for even equal temperament is not perfect. An object is only identifiable as this or that because it is more of this than that, or more of that than this, and if it is only this, or only that, it can hardly be distinguished from the other. The well tempered tuning systems kept that character while preserving practical uniformity, mirroring that society in which each soul is a valued one and all souls are part of a greater whole.

[valuedhumanoid]

I am sure someone else has made this comment, but I studied the work of Nigel Tufnell and he says that D minor is the saddest of all keys, like in his masterpiece "Lick My Lovepump" as part of a 'Trilogy' in D minor. It's a combination of Mozart and Bach. A "Mach" piece if you will. Worthy of your study, to be sure.

[sirbowman]

It’s not a myth at all. Listen to Lacrimosa from Mozart’s requiem in D minor, then listen to it in C# and tell me it’s a myth.

[thesunbehindthesun]

C# minor/E major is my fav followed by Eb minor/F# major