[PLAYING PIANO]
What is a tonal center?
Tonal center is that predominant tone that you
hear when you're playing a progression or when you're playing a song.
It's like ground zero.
It's like the anchor note that's played or that's heard.
So the tune that I played just a second ago, in the key of C--
[PLAYING PIANO]
--[SINGING] that tone right there.
That note.
That tone.
That's the note you hear that keeps coming back.
[PLAYING PIANO]
[HUMMING]
See how everything gravitates back to that-- that is your tonal center.
The center of what we are doing-- tonal center.
So if I played a song like this--
[PLAYING PIANO]
--the tonal center there would be--
[HUMMING]
The center of the tone.
The center of all that we are doing.
The tonal center.
The key that we are in.
[PLAYING PIANO]
[SINGING] The tonal center.
Sing me the tonal center here.
That would be tonal center.
How about this one?
[PLAYING PIANO]
Where's our tonal center at?
[SINGING] That would be our tonal center.
How about this song?
[PLAYING PIANO]
[SINGING] Where's our tonal center?
Right there.
That's the key that the song is in.
The tonal center.
OK?
So what is the tonal center?
The key that the song is in.
To help me explain this even further are some of my beloved Berklee College
music students, and I'm going to ask them to introduce themselves
because you're going to see them sporadically throughout the course.
Hi, I'm Courtney.
I'm from Tampa, Florida.
I'm a music business marketing major and I'm a vocalist.
Hi, I'm Grace.
I'm from Singapore, and I'm a piano principal
and I'm a music therapy major.
Hi, my name's [? Janae. ?] I am from St. Louis, Missouri.
I'm a vocalist and my major is songwriting.
Hi, my name is [? Julianna. ?] I'm from Lynn, Massachusetts.
My major is professional music, and I am a vocalist.
Hi, my name is George.
I'm from Boston.
My major is music education, and my principal [INAUDIBLE] is voice.
So there you have it, my Berklee All Stars.
So what I'd like to do now is I'm going to play
a song-- it will be a short song-- and I'm
going to ask them to sing the tonal center, OK?
You can try it also, but they're going to sing you the tonal center.
And when I point to you guys, that's when I want you to sing.
I'll try to do it right at the beginning of a measure, OK?
[PLAYING PIANO]
[SINGING]
Good job.
Let's do another one now.
[PLAYING PIANO]
[SINGING]
Cool.
That would be the tonal center.
Let's do another one.
[PLAYING PIANO]
Let me hear it.
[SINGING]
One more time.
[SINGING]
So another way to say a tonal center is, what key are we in?
Here, we were in the key of D flat.
This would be C. Tonal center.
The center of the tone, where everything kind of goes back to, OK?
That is what a tonal center is.
So we're talking about tonal centers here,
and you notice that these students were able to pick up the tonal center very
quickly.
Now one thing that helped them was, they identified that tone that
seemed to work with every chord that was being played-- that predominant sound
that you were hearing.
So if I'm playing in the key of C-- that would be my tonal center--
you'll hear that sound--
[PLAYING PIANO]
--that seems to work with every chord.
So when you're trying to recognize what key a song is in,
or what is the tonal center for that song,
that's what you want to focus in-- that note that seems
to fit every chord that's being played.
Because a little later on, I'm going to give you
an assignment that's going to see if you can figure out the tonal
center for a number of songs-- perhaps in the key of C,
since that's what we're talking about-- the key of C, all right?
Tonal centers.