to arbitrarily assign A the colour of yellow, our musical painting would contain a multitude of colours, but standing back from it a bit, the viewer would find the overall picture to be more yellowish in its overall hue. You could also think of a musical key like a
bowl of ice cream, whereby the ice cream will contain multiple ingredients, but generally there will be one principal ingredient or flavour. Strawberry ice cream has several ingredients, but mainly it tastes like strawberries. Applying that idea to music, when we hear a tune, we hear all sorts of different colours, or taste several ingredients, but in the vast majority of music there is almost always one pre-eminent note, and it’s that note which generally deter- mines the key of a particular piece of music. I also find myself describing that particular note, or colour, as the “home-base” note — the note you land on when you’ve come home after your little musical journey. In music theory speak, the home-base note is officially called the “root” or the “tonic” (as in tone). Thinking of music in this way will help you figure out the key of a particular tune more easily.
Familiar examples LET’S look at some familiar examples to help illustrate this concept, starting with our poor, besuffered Amazing Grace1
. Looking at the
music, or thinking of the written notes, you’ll observe that the palette for this tune uses only five colours: A, B, D, E, and F(#). This is what we would call a pentatonic scale (penta meaning “five” in Greek). We can already rule out C(#) and G as possible keys for this tune because they aren’t even on the palette. Then, referring again to the written music, you’ll find that the first note of the first and strongest downbeat is a D. Significantly, the last note of the melody is also a D. Further, there are lots of Ds throughout the tune, with each one landing on a strong pulse. Most importantly, that last D sounds final, like we’ve arrived home. So if you guessed that Amazing Grace (New Britain) is in D, when written out for Scottish pipes, you’d be correct! [But wait, wasn’t it said earlier that Amazing
Grace is in E¨? For reasons explained in the pre- vious features in this series, the typical modern Highland bagpipe sounds a half-step higher than the written notes. Thus, a tune written in the key of D will sound in “concert” E¨, and a tune written in A will sound in concert B¨,
1. Or New Britain, if you want to be snooty and call it by the title of the melody itself, independent of any lyrics.
MAJOR SOUNDS AS
G
MAJOR on Highland Pipes
MAJOR SOUNDS AS
A on Highland Pipes
MINAOR MINBOR SOUNDS AS
SOUNDS AS A-flat B-flat MINOR on Highland Pipes MAJOR B-flat MINCOR on Highland Pipes
when played on a modern Highland bagpipe or any chanter tuned as such. See Example One above for more information.] Let’s continue with determining the keys of tunes in their written form. Another all-too- familiar tune is Scotland the Brave. This tune contains all seven notes of a standard pipe scale: A, B, C(#), D, E, F(#), and G, so we can’t rule anything out yet. What note is on the first downbeat? A. The very last note? A. Are there lots of As, high or low, featured on strong beats? Yes. Does the last note sound like the home-base note, or tonic? Yes. Listening to it, would you say that the overall colour or flavour of the tune is A? Yes, and so with so many “A” answers, it’s safe to conclude that Scotland the Brave is written in the key of A. [Reminder: on a modern Highland bagpipe, Scotland the Brave will sound in B¨.] Of course, not all tunes provide such con-
sistent, tidy answers to these questions; and for that we can be thankful, lest our music be too obvious and predictable. Let’s look to Scots Wha Hae for something familiar, but a little less obvious key-wise. First, we can see that the tune includes every note on our chanter, and thus all seven notes of a standard pipe scale. The writ- ten tune starts on low-A, on the downbeat. The tune also ends on A, and so already you might be thinking this tune is in the key of A. But wait! There is more to consider: does the tune feature a lot of As on strong beats throughout the rest of the tune? Some, but not a convincing majority. Does the final note, the low-A, sound like the home-base, finishing note? Sort of, but not entirely — it doesn’t sound completely settled on the low-A, in my opinion. So it’s certainly possible that A isn’t such a prominent colour after all. In fact, to my ear, D sounds a little more assertive. And looking at the tune, it turns out there are as many Ds landing on strong beats as As. Thus, I support the notion that this tune is actually in D — a conclusion bolstered by the fact that Scots Wha Hae sounds
MAJOR SOUNDS AS
D
MAJOR on Highland Pipes
MINOR MINEOR SOUNDS AS
D SOUNDS AS E-flat E-flat
MINOR MINFOR on Highland Pipes
on Highland Pipes
Example 1. The top line shows the user-friendly names of the keys as they would sound on Border pipes, smallpipes, fiddle or guitar, and the names you should arrive at if you follow Tim’s instructions. The bottom line shows the names of the top line of keys as sounded on Highland pipes when the chanter is at concert pitch.
great on smallpipes with a D-drone sounding, and also with an accompanist playing chords based in the key of D. [Again, on a Highland pipe, Scots Wha Hae will sound in E¨.] The keys of D and A are by far the most common keys of Scottish pipe tunes. But there are a few others that crop up from time to time. Let’s now examine another popular tune, Paddy’s Leather Breeches, looking at the same indicators as before. This jig contains most notes of the scale, but not quite all. With the exception of a typo in the Scots Guards book setting, there are no Ds anywhere in the tune, and Gs are very few and far between. Thus, we can pretty well rule out the keys of D and G. The tune starts on B, on the downbeat. The tune features a lot of Bs, F(#)s, and high-As on strong beats. Most notably, the final note — a C(#) in the same setting — doesn’t sound at all like a settled, finishing note.
In fact it
seems to be turning us back to repeat the tune, or move onto another one that starts on B, perhaps. Finally, and most crucially, my ear hears B as the most established note, the root of the whole tune. If you tallied it all up and guessed that this tune is in the key of B, you’d be correct. [Technically speaking, pipe tunes in B are minor, and would thus be referred to as ‘B-minor’, or abbreviated as ‘Bm’. This specification will be discussed in the next issue of Piping Today. On Highland pipes: Cm] Now for a trickier question: In what key is The Ewe With the Crooked Horn?
[If you
know the tune, or have the music available, try figuring out its key before reading further.] Did you guess A? Or D? Or both? In fact, it’s both. The first two parts of this strathspey are in A, and then the tune jumps straight into the key of D at the beginning of the third part. It remains in D throughout all of the fourth part as well. Weird, huh? But it sounds perfectly fine, and there are many other well-loved tunes that enjoy a similar kind of key change [see table over page]. These sorts of tunes are not unlike a
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PROFILE
CONCERT PITCH
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