How to Determine What Key You Are In - 4 Different Methods

whether there is or there were third world war it what's going on guys Brian from zombie guitar here and this lesson I'm going to give you several different methods as to how you can quickly determine what key a piece of music is in okay so once you know the key that the rhythm section is playing and or whatever the chord progression is that you happen to be wanting to jam over you can then appropriately select your scale okay so if you determine that the piece of music is in the key of a major well then a major scale is going to be your basic framework okay or if you determine it that piece of music is in the key of G minor then the G minor scale is going to be your basic framework okay so five methods I'm going to give you to quickly determine the key and then you can therefore select your and an appropriate scale all right so the first method that we're going to use to determine our key is going to be to make use of the circle of fifths all right the circle of fifths is this image that you see on the screen right here basically what you're going to want to do is either memorize this circle or simply just save a picture of it to your phone or any way you can have this available to you tons and tons of information available right in this circle okay now the circle fits that you're going to use sometimes you'll see versions of it that don't have the inner circle as you see here okay sometimes we'll just see the outer circle where the top is see and moving clockwise you have G and then D and then a sometimes you'll just see the outer circle without the inner circle I prefer the one with both the outer and the inner because the inner circle represents the relative minors of each of the twelve keys that you see in the outer circle so for instance for example the C right up top it's relative minor is a minor that's why a minor is right right in line with the C or if you look at the G its relative minor is a minor okay you look at the D it's relative minor is B minor okay so the inner circle represents the relative minor keys for all of the twelve key possible keys in the in the outer circle so I prefer to use that version of the circle of fifths okay the one that has both the outer and the inner circle alright so the way that we can determine the key using this is I'm going to be using two different chord progressions as my examples and we're going to basically use this method to determine the key okay so I'm gonna use the first progression is I'm going to use the Hotel California chord progression Hotel California has a bunch of chords in it let me just play it first and go through the chord so it starts out with a B minor then it moves to an f-sharp that moves to an a major then it moves to an E major then G G major then to a D major that to an E minor that to an F sharp 7 and the progression starts back over again okay so one very very quick shortcut that you can use is to look at all the chords in the chord progression and then look at the first chord and the last chord okay more often than not the answer is going to be found in either your first chord or your last chord now if the first chord in the last chord are the same thing then that's a very very good chance that that's your key right there okay however sometimes the first chord and the last chord of the song are different okay in the case of Hotel California for example the song starts out on a B minor goes through the whole entire song and the song finishes byegone it ends right on that B minor chord okay so right there that's telling us because the song starts on B minor and ends on B minor very good chance that the song is in the key of B minor okay it actually is but I just wanted to point out that first and last chord thing okay now if for some reason the first chord and the last chord of the song differ from one another we can go through and analyze the rest of the chords and we can use the circle of fifths to help us determine our key okay now the first thing you're gonna wanna do is you're gonna want to look for the relative major and and its relative minor chord being located somewhere in the progression okay so remember how I said the outer circle are the possible the twelve possible major Keys the inner circle is each of the relative minors for each of the major keys okay so what we're going to want to look for is we're going to want to look for C an a minor being in there or G and E minor being in there or D and B minor being in there or a and F sharp minor being in there okay we want to look for a combination of both something in both you know the outer circle and the inner circle because that is going to lead us in the right direction so in the case of Hotel California there exists the major chord and there also exists a B minor chord okay so right there that's one good snippet of information that we can use the fact that there is the D and there is the B minor okay that's a very good indication that the key of this piece of music is in either the key of D major or B minor okay of the two we're gonna go with B minor because that's what the song started out okay see how this is working now you can further expand this circle of fifths thing by looking at the rest of the chords of the piece of music now the way the circle fits lumps chords within a key together is it's in groupings of six okay so if piece of music is in the key of C major the other available chords within the key of C major are in that grouping of six okay so you'll see the F and you'll see the G you'll see the a minor you'll see the D minor and you'll see the E minor that's the grouping of six for the key of C its relative minor of course is a minor but it's all right there in that grouping of six okay for the case of Hotel California okay we're looking for the grouping of six right around the D in the B minor area all right so the grouping of six is d and then right clockwise you have the a and then counterclockwise you have the D and then it's relative minor is the B minor and then the other two chords in that grouping our E minor and F sharp minor all right so that's our grouping of six now if we only analyze the chords of this song we see that this song contains a B minor okay it contains an f-sharp it's an f-sharp major okay so that's not actually in that grouping of six okay but then it has an A major and then it goes to an E major okay that's not necessarily in that grouping of six okay then it has a G major which is in the grouping of six to add E major to an e minor which is an is in the grouping of six to an F sharp seven okay so now a lot of those chords right there are found right in that grouping of six all right we found the D in there we found the G we found the a we found the B minor we found the E minor there wasn't an f-sharp minor but there was an f-sharp major and an F sharp seven okay but five of the six were found in that progression plus the fact that the D and the B minor were you know both found in that song the relative major minor combination and the song started out that starts out on the key of her on the court of B minor and the song ends on the court of B minor so all of these indications right here are leading me to believe that this song is in the key of B minor okay so you see how I was able to use the circle of fifths and the grouping and the relative major minor and the first slash last chord idea all to help me determine this you can do this with any piece of music any chord progression and the circle of fifths is going to give you your answer more often than not alright so let's try it with another example okay so let's let's do Santeria by sublime okay so that song starts out with the E major chord that goes to a this would be a G sharp major okay that goes to a c-sharp minor' he goes to a B major okay so look at her first chord look at her last chord E major is the first chord of the progression B major is the last chord of the progression however the song ends on the E major chord okay so right there we have a good indication that this this piece of music is probably in the key of E major okay it's probably an E major song started out with that chord and the song ends on e major okay but say we're still not sure yet the next thing we want to do is we want to take and we want to try and find that relative major relative minor see if those two chords are located within this progression okay and we know the E major is here and the c-sharp minor is both in this progression okay II major c-sharp minor both found in this progression this is a very good indication that we're close okay or that we're probably already there okay if we're still not sure we can look at the rest of the chords okay so we have the e major and then we have the G sharp major okay that's not part of that grouping of six okay but the c-sharp minor is there and the B major is there okay so that grouping of six you know we have the e we have the C sharp minor and we have the B three of the four chords are located right in that grouping of six and even though the G sharp is major and not minor there is still a G sharp of sorts in that grouping of six okay so the information that I'm giving the song starts out on E the song ends the very last quarter the song is e okay the existence of the of the major and its respective relative minor are both found okay so the e and the c-sharp minor' are both there okay and then looking at the grouping of six I see that three of the four chords that are in the progression are are found within this you know within that grouping of six and even the fourth chord even though it's a G sharp major but the grouping of six says as a G sharp minor all these things are indicating that the correct key is B major okay hopefully this is making sense okay the circle of fifths sang is very very useful and once you understand it you're going to you know you're going to rely on them a lot I think a couple things to keep in mind about using the circle of fifths method sometimes you're gonna come across chords that have you know extensions on it they're gonna be you know Serie C sus twos you're gonna see sus fours you're gonna see sevenths ninths elevenths sharp 11 all kinds of stuff okay for the most part just ignore that stuff and look for just the main whether the courts are major or minor okay so if it's in E minor seven whatever okay ignore the seven part just look at the fact that it's an E minor or if it's in a sus 4 whatever ignore the sells for stuff just look at the fact that it's an a major okay so yeah ignore all the chord extensions all their additional chord tones just look at the quality of the court of whether the chords are major or minor and then use just the simplified major minor chords to make your determination of whether it fits into that grouping of six okay another thing often times you can look at that grouping of six and you'll see that there's three majors and three minors okay now a lot of times music in order to be interesting is they're gonna have some non diatonic chords in there so some of those chords may be altered to be their major version or some of those chords will be altered to be minor instead of major as you saw in both of these examples all of the chords within each of these two examples were located within this grouping of six however some in certain cases the chords were altered to major so in the case of Hotel California we had the B minor okay and then we had f sharp but it was a major ok but it's still an F sharp of sorts so it still kind of falls into that grouping of six alright and then we had the a major which is in the grouping of six and then we had the e major which is in the grouping of six or the E major is not necessarily in the grouping of six but that the e minor is there and that's an you know it's still an E ok and then we had the G and then we had the D and then we had the E minor lock point is sometimes they're gonna be altered between the major and minor ok but the fact that it's still the same letter name and it's in that grouping of six ok that's that's how these chords get grouped together ok sometimes sometimes they're made non diatonic by being altered from major to minor or vice versa alright so just think some things to keep in mind but there's tons of information available right there and that circle of fifths yeah that's a very very good way to help you determine what key you're in ok based on the chords alright so that's the first method all right now the second method that you can use is you can use pentatonic boxes all right now what I mean by a pentatonic box is this shape you may or may not have seen it before if you've been playing for any length of time I'm sure you've seen this pentatonic shape before it's pretty much the first scale that most guitar players use this can be played anywhere starting on any fret on the low E string okay so just starting on the seventh fret for example okay that's a pentatonic box there are only 12 possible pentatonic boxes because starting on the low E string which is the note e you then have the first fret the second fret third fourth fifth sixth seventh all the way take it to 12 which is again the e okay so this is the same as this okay everything repeats itself after the twelfth fret just an octave higher so you only have 12 possible pentatonic boxes that you could possibly use now for any song that's written in a key okay there's only 12 possible keys therefore only one of these 12 possible pentatonic boxes is going to sound good and when I say good I mean really good over top of it okay you may find that other pentatonic boxes that you try sound okay but there's only going to be one that sounds perfect over it okay now what you're gonna do is you're going to play I have the chord progressions of the previous examples use the Hotel California in the Santeria so I'm just going to play each of the pentatonic boxes over top of the chord progression and we're going to hear if it sounds like it fits okay and when I say play the pentatonic Box I mean just kind of mess around in it you don't have to play the scale exactly as exactly like this you can kindly just kind of improvise using that little box but we want to hear if our improvisation using the particular test box is going to work to help us to determine the key okay so let's try this over the Hotel California progression I want to just use each box until I find the one that actually sounds the best okay so let's start out all the way down here and that one sounded like crap it sounded like I was terribly out of tune obviously but that's not the right answer so let's try the pentatonic box right here on the first fret okay okay right in there first fret [Music] that even sounded worse obviously that's not our answer okay now we'll try right here on the second fret this is the this pentatonic box [Music] that one didn't really sound all that great either some of the notes in there sounded you know some of the notes seem to work what there was some sour notes as well too so why if I was completely new at this I may consider that to be a possibility just kind of knowing what it should sound like I'm writing that one off that's not the that's not the correct pentatonic box okay even though some of the notes seem to sound okay all right you can kind of go through and do this with every single test box so I'm only going to do one more incorrect test box and then I'm gonna move to the correct one so you can hear what the correct one actually sounds like alright so let me try let's say I'm trying the fourth fret area fourth to seventh fret area as my test box this is another known bad one okay so let's test this one out [Music] it sounds like crap okay so we know what bed test boxes sound like okay so let's say we went we did our test on every single one and then we finally got to the seventh fret area the 7th to the 10th fret area I'm giving the answer right now that's the correct answer but let's hear how that sounds okay [Music] okay here how that just fits pretty much every note that I was playing actually every note that I was playing was working because that was the answer that's the correct scale B minor pentatonic seventh fret right there that's our note B okay this is our pentatonic box that fits over that particular piece of music okay so if I didn't look at the circle of fifths or anything like that and I just solely wanted to use my ear to help me determine what the key was in and I would have done all my test boxes and I will finally got to this seventh to tenth fret area I really okay well that's my that's my pentatonic box I call that the home box I have a lesson called the whole box lesson okay so that's my home box that would be applied to the score progression all right so now what if it's major or if it's minor okay this method applies no matter what it doesn't matter if it's a major key or a minor key there's only 12 possible keys okay there's only 12 possible pentatonic boxes only one of these pentatonic boxes is going to fit over top of the chord progression that you're attempting to figure out this particular example happens to be written in the minor key this happens to be in the pentatonic box that worked at the seventh fret to tenth fret area okay and therefore because it's a minor key our tonic note is located here here and here within this pentatonic box okay I'm gonna give you a major example and you're gonna see how the same process can be applied for major keys as well all right so I have Santeria the Santeria progressions stored on my looper pedal here so now say we wanted to do this test I'm gonna give you I'm all I got to do two wrong ones when I do the third one's going to be the okay so starting down this way and I want to kind of work my way up until I find the correct key so let me test second fret for the safe example okay [Music] obviously it sounds bad okay let me try the fifth fret for example let me see if that one's maybe okay obviously that one's not the correct answer either okay I could try every single one if I want to all right but to keep this video relatively short at least under an hour I'm not going to tried one so let me go to the correct one now okay the correct answer the correct pentatonic box would be located here between the ninth and twelfth fret let's see what that one sounds like [Music] [Music] okay see how everything just seemed to work okay that was just a nice sounding scale okay so that tells me that this particular box is the box that is my key okay so if it was a minor key then it would be C sharp minor if it was a major key then it would be e major okay when you're looking at this pentatonic box as I said in the previous example your minor tonics are located here here and here your major tongs if it's a major key that you're planning are located here here okay this little box functions is both the minor pentatonic and the major pentatonic if I start here and move through the scale it's a major pentatonic scale okay if I start here and in there then it's a minor pentatonic scale okay relative major relative minor the both interchangeable with one another the only difference is the location of the tonic note and the general feel and sound of the song okay so you see how this pentatonic test box thing can be applied for both major progressions and minor progressions okay so you can join this method this pentatonic test box method with the circle fit stuff and looking at the first and last chord of the song the song the chord song starts out on in the chord that song ends on you got a really good you know a really good guess of what your key is okay so that's method number two okay we're gonna move on to the third method okay so the third method is very quick you know the other ones were a little long drawn this is simply listen for the chord that sounds like it is resolution okay listen for the chord that sounds like the end all right so I'm gonna give you just a quick play quick chord progression I don't remember what song this is but I always like this just three chords and it goes like this [Music] okay so goes f do a quick C - G - quick C back to an F okay so if you're just looking at just that chord progression you may look at the first chord and you may look at the last chord and you may think to yourself okay maybe the songs in F or maybe the song is in G okay but actually the correct answer is neither for this particular progression however you could use the idea of resolution now what I mean by a resolution is you strum the chord and it sounds like the songs over okay I don't know any other way to describe it so given the fact that we only have three chords here let's try it for all three okay so let's play that progression and then we'll end on each of the chords and see if it sounds like there's resolution okay [Music] okay so we ended on the F okay now I'm gonna add it onto G and see if that sounds like resolution [Music] okay now when and on the C and C if that sounds like resolution [Music] all right so I don't know if is obvious to you but this C just sounded like that was the key of the song it sounded like if I play through a whole entire song verses choruses bridges and everything and then I ended the song on this that just sounds like the resolving chord alright if I were to end the entire song played all the verses all the courses and I just entered on this I guess you could I guess you might see that as resolving it may sound as that was what the song resolved on but I think the C sounded better of the two choices okay the answer is actually the song is in the key of C alright but if you still don't trust your ear okay you can still go back and use the previous methods so you can actually take those three chords and you can just go and look at the look at the circle of fifths okay looking at the circle of fifths you see right where the sea is won't look at that little grouping of six there's no major or there's no minor chords in this example but within that grouping of six you see the C see the F and you see the G well there's your key right there right top dead center okay then that's where your key is okay right now grouping at six the middle of it the major that's the key of C okay but also listen for the resolutions and songs are going to have a particular chord of the progression that just sounds like it resolves their Santeria [Music] see like he just works he is just the good resolving new Hotel California the same thing the whole song goes through and it just ends on it ends right on that B minor all right resolution listen for the chord that works the best as a resolution okay that's method number three okay and then the fourth method is you're going to look for the existence of dominant seventh chords within the progression or look for the existence of a dominant seventh chord in the progression okay so I know in the first method here I told you to ignore sevenths and ninths and sauces and all that stuff and just look at the major or minor quality of the chords okay but for this particular method you're gonna look at the chords in their entirety and you're going to basically you're going to be looking for dominant seventh chords okay so dominant seventh chord is is a major chord that has a seventh degree okay not now the major seventh chord justice seven so if you see something like D seven or a seven or e seven or C seven okay that's a dominant seventh chord alright not minor seven okay you're looking for just a major chord with a little seven symbol next to it a seventh chord sounds like this okay seventh chords they sound like that okay you're gonna look for the existence of a seventh chord in your progression and once you find the seventh chord its progression there's a very good chance that that is going to be the five chord of the key that you're in alright so if you don't know it the five chord is basically the way you determine that in reference to the actual key of the song is number one you could look at your circle of fifths again and the chord directly next to it in the counterclockwise direction is going to be the key okay so if you see if you happen to see a d7 chord in your progression okay you find the D on the circle of fifths right next to it in the counterclockwise direction is going to be the G chord okay so d7 would be the five G would be your key okay using this method if you see an e7 in your progression somewhere okay and you want to assume that the e7 is the five chord okay look at the e on the circle fits one in the counterclockwise direction would be a okay so a would be the key of music or the key of this progression okay so the existence of a seventh chord is a very good chance that that's the five chord of the key okay another way to determine determine your key without the use of the circle of fifths and using the seventh chord thing is you can always go up or one string lower and two frets back okay so if in the chord progression you happen to see a c7 and the chord progression okay blah blah go throw the chords you happen to notice that one of the courts is a dominant seven chord dominant c7 okay you immediately think okay that's the five chord that's the five chord of what key how do I determine the key well you go one string lower and two frets back okay so C seven would be your five chord one string lower and now on the E string and then I go back two frets to the first fret F so C seven is the five chord of F same thing for anything I see nice Evan somewhere in my progression that's the five chord of what key of what chord well here's a up here on the seventh fret of the a string okay so go to one string lower to my E string and then two frets back that's an a okay so he's seven would be the five chord of a okay now the cool thing about Dominic chords is they function as the five chord for both major keys and minor keys alright so if the progression that you're analyzing or trying to determine the key of happens to be a minor progression okay then you can still use this dominant chord method alright so if I happen to be analyzing a particular progression and I see that there is the existence of a D major chord it's our a d7 chord okay so I could count one string back or one string lower two frets back okay G minor okay so if in the chord progression there's no G major there but the chord progression sounds kind of sad and the chord progression has a G minor in it and a d7 in it okay well there's a very good chance that that d7 is going to be the five chord and the key of the piece of music that you're trying to figure out is G minor okay so this dominant seven thing works for both major Keys and minor keys okay that'll function is the five chord four major Keys and minor Keys all right now if you happen to if your chord progression happens to have more than one dominant chord in it which you may come across from time to time and the type of music you're playing a piece of music may have a couple of different dominant seven chords in it you can always rely on your other methods okay you can go back to your circle Fitts method you can go back to selecting your correct pentatonic box method you can listen to listen for the chord that you think that the song resolves on you can do that method or you can simply look for the existence of the five chord and the one chord alright so if you see a couple dominant seventh chords but you only see one combination of a particular dominant seventh chord and then the chord that's a fifth below it okay well there's a good chance that that's gonna be your key right there okay so that's the best way to describe it so I'm gonna stop it here if I left anything out hit me up and ask questions be glad to help you out thanks a lot [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Brian Kelly

Views: 67,958

Keywords: guitar, guitar lessons, circle of fifths, finding the key, pentatonic, resolution, music theory

Id: rhrq5VZd7IU

Length: 38min 35sec (2315 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 19 2016