have you ever seen or heard a singer you know walk up to a piano accompanist and
say something like "okay Sam let's play Ipanema in b-flat, my key" right then
you wonder well how in the heck does that work or how can I figure out what
my key is for some tune well that question about vocal range is in the
kind of connection to different keys it's a pretty complex one to describe in
text yet it's really not very difficult to understand once it kind of sinks in
and you can see it visually so I'm gonna explain it to you and clear some things
up here in this video
all right so the question we're dealing with today is how do I know or how do I
figure out what is my key or you know what key is best for me to
sing a tune in well step one is to realize this truism I guess okay
different songs all have different melody lines right that's what separates
one tune from another so I've got a different melody line but each one of
those melody lines have different ranges between their highest and their lowest
note right that makes sense because there's somewhere in that melody line
it's gonna go up and down throughout the tune and there's gonna be some high and
some lows so some tunes have bigger ranges and some are smaller but
they're different for every tune so let me give you a couple examples of things
right here say we're gonna do - I'm
gonna pick a couple easy ones like birthday song right just so the tunes
aren't knocking us out of the water here let's take a look at this so say we're
going to do the birthday song so here we go we're gonna sing the birthday song
right so we're going
right so so far pretty small range oh and jumps all the way up there
right
so if I was singing that tune there
high for me, I'm like ohhhh that one kind of stretches me out just a little bit right
it's just getting my my vocal range it's a little bit too high right there so I'm
like well you know it would be easier if I could just sing this tune just down a
little bit let's take the whole thing and just scooch it down just a little
say okay well let's do it say starting it there now that's perfectly
within my range right I can really for me and this is me alone probably not you
I can do that pretty easy
so in this tune for my voice only it was easier for me to sing it like from here
to here here was the entire distance of that melody line instead of up here
because this was a little bit too high for me so I just took the whole thing
and scooted it down well if you end up figuring out what what key those are in
the first one I was playing it in was F right and the reason the only reason
you can tell that is it's I'll do it sorry I'll do the melody and I don't
want to get into all the details of how you figure out what key a tune is
in but here's one super fast super easy trick I can give you and that is
whatever the very last note and last chord of a tune is 99.99% of the time
that's gonna be the key so let me show you this if I'm playing
you played through it starting there and that ends on an F and highly likely then
the last chord is going to be just an F major chord it turns out that is almost
every time when you figure that out whatever that last chord is that will
just be the key that the tune is in so this was playing it in the key of F when
I started here
the F Chord and the B flat chord right F, C, F
so it ended on an F Court so in that case that was the one that was a
little bit too high for me because I didn't want to sing all the way up here
so I just shifted the whole thing down and instead played in C right so I'm
gonna start here sorry I'm trying to get my hands out of the way
happy birthday - back to the C chord - happy birthday day - now when that reached up I could sing
that one right excuse me F, C, G - so in that case and
again I don't want to get you too hung up on the keys I was in, the point is
when I couldn't sing the birthday song and in a particular spot cause it just got
a little bit too high for me right I just found a spot where that melody
felt better in my range now that may not be the same for you but in this case the
key of F was too high for me so for now on I'm gonna walk up and say hey Sam
let's play the birthday song in C right so C is kind of my tune so now
let's go on to tune number two just to make this point let's go on to some
other nutty tune that of course you'd probably never ever sing while you're
out working a gig but hey you would at a baseball game and that's taking me out
to the ballgame right so so yeah we said that the key of C worked for me for the
birthday song well let's try the key of C in take me out to the ballgame so
that tune is
all right so "it's take-" you know but I'm gonna be doing down here cause
I've got a real low voice right so I will be "take me out to the ball game-" I'll
play the melody here so you can see it "take me out to the ball game, take me out to the crowd -"
right then "find me some peanuts and cracker jacks, I don't care if I never get back cause it's root -" right well that one's a little
so where I was singing that seemed a little low so instead of doing it there
let me move it up a little bit right I don't want to do it there cause
that got too low for me so I'm going to shift up I'll go up this case let's
start it on the F "take me out -
excuse me take me out to the ball" ah that one's feel a little better "take me out to the crowd
right
I don't care if I never get back" well that one's falling pretty well for me
"take me out to the ball game take-" that's not so low so hey in this case I think I
like take me out to the ball game in the key of F rather than in C right so
I'd rather do that one here
and on and on and on so the point was and that's why I did it that way in the
birthday song the key of F was too high for me for that tune so I'd rather I'd
rather sing that one in the key of C but in case of ballgame take me out to the
ballgame the key of C was too low for me so I'd rather sing that one in F see
what I mean so that's what's kind of funny it's not as though you have a
particular key for you it's that a particular song is gonna be best played
for your particular range in some particular key right ie you need to
shift the melody line into your range as best as you can and then determine what
that key is needed to fit the melody line there right get it into a spot
where you can sing it so you can kind of sum it up it's just saying that your
range doesn't identify one key that's best for you but rather you should sing
tunes in whatever particular key for a tune that gets it into your range right
it's kind of a backwards thing does that make sense for example you know again
like I said I might need to sing the song Misty in the key of F but I might
need to sing the song Jingle Bells in the key of D so it's not like F is my
key for every tune it just was the key that works for that particular tune
because those two Tunes melodies are just not exactly the same so singers
tend to learn I mean good singers professionals they tend to learn what
key a particular tune that they're wanting to sing is best for their range
for them right but it's not a situation where that one key is best for every
song for them because every song has a different melody line and has a
different range so that of course then leads headfirst into the topic of
transposing which lets you easily they're fairly easily once you get it
figured out it lets you kind of slide a tune up or down a few notes to get the
melody comfortably in your range and transposing is way beyond the realm of
what I want to get into in this video and in fact I'll probably do some videos
on that and we cover that in depth in multiple places in our online courses
but but the main concept is just taking the chord changes to a tune right
wherever they're written in lead sheet and you move all of them up or down the same
interval or maybe you want to think of it the same number of half-steps
throughout the entire tune so you know in the real world the way I'm doing when
I'm learning tunes right I'll sing along with a tune from a
lead sheet if I'm just seeing it for the first time at the very beginning and
I'll see if I can sing it in that key without getting way too high or way too
low for me range wise and if it's uncomfortably high
I'll just transpose it down a couple of notes until it gets that highest part
that I'm having trouble with down into my range so I'm not struggling and then
once I figure out how far down I went I just learned the whole tune and that key
instead and I just play it there enough times until I get the chord changes
memorized then like anything else we do you don't need the lead sheet anyway you
don't have any more lead sheet and you just have another tune that's in your in
your head that you can kind of throw in your basket and can play at this point
in a key that works for your own vocal range
so to summarize and wrap this up just remember no one has one key that is
their best key to sing in all the time rather you're gonna have a favorite key
to sing some particular tune in and that K - excuse me that key may be different
for different tunes based on the range of that tunes melody line so hopefully
that helps clear something up that is often misunderstood and kind of
misquoted and as always I hope you have a great time and always have fun playing
piano