Finding the Perfect Key For Any Song

         Most people think a song is a finite thing, sacred almost.  Many of my students even imitate the singers who originated the recording of a particular song.  I always try to tell them that those singers are already being paid to sound the way they do, so the record companies are NOT gonna pay any other singer to sing the song exactly like the original singers.  A song is a kind of PICTURE, on the one hand BUT I like to think of a song as the PAINT FOR a picture!  When you have paint, there is not ONE picture to paint; the resulting picture can be ANY style, ANY tempo, ANY rhythm, and/or ANY pattern.  The ONLY “absolutes” for a song are restrictions that the composer (s) imposes on them such as the melody, lyrics, and/or chord structure.  However, even these elements can be “adjusted” with the introduction of chord substitutions and/or vocal “riffs”.  For example, most of us have heard a few of the Super Bowl performances of “The Star-Spangled Banner” but I think you’ll agree that no two of them have ever been the same.  There are singers who sing as if they couldn’t find the melody of a song with two hands and a flashlight!  Another very significant difference between all those singers’ renditions is that each one was in a DIFFERENT Musical KEY.  The REASON they were performed in various keys is so that the performance of the song will sound AMAZING!  If you are a singer, you’ve almost certainly had to sing songs in the WRONG key.  Maybe everything was “okay” except for just a couple of notes here and there but nowhere in the song was INCREDIBLE; it was just “okay”.  I don’t know about you but I NEVER want to sing a song “okay”.

         So, how DO you find the “right” Key?  You go to the Chorus and/or the Bridge, wherever the “Money Notes” are.  Money Notes are the most important notes in a song or in your Vocal Range; they are at the point in the song where it reaches its strongest point, its most tender point, or its biggest Crescendo.  You want to find the Musical Key where these notes sound the best in YOUR voice, not Meghan Trainor’s or Beyonce’s or Bruno Mars’, YOURS.  Every other note in the song can be “finessed” or even altered to accommodate the most important passages.  Going back to The Star-Spangled Banner, that is a KILLER song; it is VERY difficult to sing because it requires a singer with a range wider than 1 ½ octaves, and that is decently rare, believe it or not.  I always joke that Francis Scott Key must have been a saxophone player; he DEFINITELY was not a singer!  The “Money Notes” in our national anthem are in two places, the Bridge (“and the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air”) and at the end (most people want to end it “High and Loud”); they want to “blow people away.”  Therefore, to find your perfect key for The Star-Spangled Banner, you need to first find the Key you sound best on in the above two spots and then, “adapt” the rest of the song for performance.  The beginning of the song requires low range notes but if necessary, a singer can almost “ghost” those notes because everyone is waiting to hear our two “Money” spots.  I KNOW you know what I mean.

         The next time you find a song you want to learn, cover, write, or just add to your repertory, try my formula and see if it’s not effective.  There is NO SUCH THING as ONE Key for any song.  Granted, if you are cast into a Musical Theater play, you may HAVE to sing songs in the Keys they are published in but that’s because to change the Key of any song in the show, the copyist would have to re-write parts for an entire orchestra and MOST Musical Directors are not willing to go to all that trouble.  However, for every other genre of music, there should be NO reason why the “correct” Key for any song is not the Key where you sing it “best.”  This can be challenging if you need to have Vocal Tracks or Instrumental Tracks in order to perform but any good voice teacher should be able to adjust Musical Keys for you and will often create simple Vocal Tracks for a small fee.  I provide this service for my students.  There is even, at least, one website that I know of that will “transpose” Instrumental Tracks for a lot of songs.  The link to this site is:  http://www.karaoke-version.com/custombackingtrack/, Karaoke-Version.com.  MusicNotes.com (http://www.musicnotes.com/) is another great site for buying songs on sheet music in “Transposed” Keys.  Of course, to buy sheet music, you need to know beforehand which Key you need the song in, so it’s best to work with your Voice Teacher first BUT this is a very “doable” thing and BOY does it make a difference when you get a song in the “Right” Key.  It’s like Heaven opens its doors and when you start to “Paint”, using your voice, all the strokes or notes are in the sweetest spot of your voice and the painting is the most beautiful that it could possibly be.  Like any great work of art, a song is crafted with highly-honed skills, love, patience, passion, and imagination but the Key, the RIGHT Key is the true “Key” to your success with any song!

         Thanks for reading my blog!  Next time, I’ll talk about HOW to “Paint” your unique canvas, and some of the “tricks” of artistry that I’ve discovered over the years.  If you have questions about my lessons or me, check out my website at www.SingitForward.net.  I REALLY love hearing from you, too, so PLEASE send me any and all questions and comments about this post.  I want each of you to SUCCEED!  Sing it Forward!