hi Scott Houston here hey you know in a really recent previous video I went over
how to figure out you know what key would be the right key to sing a tune in
if you were trying to sing it or you're trying to figure it out for someone
you're going to help accompany and now I'm gonna do a little kind of inverse of
that or maybe a little twist on that and say what if a singer comes up to you and
start singing a tune in some key and then as a piano player they want you to
start playing along with them say hey let's do it in this key even if they
don't know what key it is well that's what I'm gonna figure out in this little
video I've got a quick tip I can give you that'll really nail that to the wall
okay so the question becomes if a singer walks up to you and just starts singing
a tune or maybe you're just humming a tune and you've you know gotten through
the whole thing you say that that that works well for me where I'm singing it I
can get all the way to the highest notes of the song and I can get all the way to
the lowest notes of the song which is the whole idea of making sure tune is
within your range right I mean remember from that other video if you haven't
seen it yet and by the way I'll put a link to it and in the comments here but
you know remember the issue is that any any particular song as the melody works
its way up and down through a song it's gonna have some distance and you know
what who knows what it is but there's going to be some highest and lowest note
of a song and then what you have to make sure is that where it is you're singing
if say it this was the high and that was the low note you need to make darn sure
that in your voice you can sing this low in this high right so it's this function
if you can and say you're your range was from this note to this note then you'd
need to take wherever was you're singing and shift it down then the whole idea
you just got to get every note in the melody within the highest and lowest
notes you can sing or in other words your range
okay so again now we're playing a game of a singer is singing a tune just
humming it or whatever and they're walking up to you and they'd love for
you to start accompanying them you've got to figure out what what tune they're
singing it in or maybe you're at a rehearsal or something right so here's
how you go about it when someone starts singing the tune just stick with them
and and get all the way to the end of the tune and the key is figure out what
the very last note is that they're singing and whatever that is whatever
that last note is that is highly likely going to be the key of the tune really I
know it sounds like magic but the reality is that if you play a major
chord based on whatever that last note is say the last notes a you know a
b-flat if you played a b-flat major triad and it sounds right and it kind of
sounds complete if you will then it's super likely that the key that that
thing you're singing in is in b-flat and then you'll have to figure out and do
the transposing to figure out the chords for that key and we'll talk about that
in a second but let me just make this point okay so say someone out of the
blue comes up and says you know we're gonna sing the star-spangled banner and
and you know I want to start singing it here
yeah and they go on through the whole thing right well that's what you need to
do is work your way through it to get to the very last note of the tune so you're
thinking right and you don't necessarily have to play it either although that
would be fine you know but you need to just get work your way all the way to
the end of it right so there's the lowest note so far again and then it
that part repeats and you go up "on the Rockets red glare" so it goes
all the way up to there all right and again they started singing on this
note this was the first note they sang on just to give you an idea here right
and I'm just trying to get to the end of the tune
here we go "of the brave" so you got to the very last note of the tune and it was a C
note so now play a C chord with that and did
that sound kind of like finished and kind of the way it was "home of
the brave" yeah that sounds kind of right you know
it wasn't like and no that's not that's not the end or it's like yes we're done
it's a sense of completion right well that is a C that means the key
that she was singing or we were just playing this tune in was in the key
of C the first note wasn't a C it was actually a G in this case but and if you
want to really confirm it start the tune using it with the same note you started
on because almost every tune not only ends on the key, on a chord that is
the key it is probably 60 or 70% also start that way not everyone but most of
them do that so say yeah that's right
all right that definitely sounds like it's in the right thing so that's that's
how you do it now let me just test that on another one
just to show you something that's not in C I obviously intentionally figured that
one out so I could show it to you and C to be simple but let's just say somebody
walks up and you're singing Christmas carols or something and they come up and
saying I don't know what huh they start singing jingle bells right
and you're just singing through it again you're just singing through trying to
get to the end oh what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh that's right
so you're gonna find that note right
that's the note that the tune ends on well that's an e so play an E major
chord with it and see if the sounds right yep
it does it's just amazing ninety nine ninety nine and a half percent of the
time I mean just overwhelmingly that will work and again if you want to
really check it about 60 or 70 percent of the time it'll also be the first
chord of the tune so you can try it
remember that's where we started playing jingle bells was on this note so play it
with whatever you key you determined and see if it sounds right at the very
beginning because almost every tune starts on the on the root key that it is
right on the root chord of whatever key it is
ta da so now you know that's in the key of e right so there you go that's how you
do it you find out if you're ever you know singing something work you're and
you want to know what key you happen to be singing it in work your way all the
way to the end of the tune right the very end of the tune and then whatever
that very last melody note is try making that the root of a major chord and see
if that doesn't sound right and it almost always will and if that's the
case you've got yourself the key of the tune a little magic trick right there
huh really hit work so I hope that helps you out maybe get you out of a jam
or clear something up for you and you can use it and throw that in your bag of
tricks but as always have fun playing piano