Hi

Does anybody have any advice on how to work out the key of a passage (only up to grade 3) when there is no key signature? I'm doing a test and I get some right and not others.

Any help/ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks

Write down all the sharp or flat notes. (or you could write down all the notes and try to rearrange them in order to see which scale you come up with, remembering there may be gaps)
Compare these with key signatures.
You may not have ALL the sharps or flats in a key so look for the last named one in the key signature (Ab in the key of Eb major/Cminor).
Notice any accidentals that Don't fit with the key signature as this will probably indicate a minor key.
The note that doesn't fit will most likely be the 7th note of the minor scale.

I've just tried that and think I get it. Could you just explain to me though: I've got a line of music that has no key signature and has C, F, G, D and E sharp. To me that looks like E major (with having the C, F, G and D). Obviously the E sharp doesn't fit so I thought it must be the relative minor, being C# minor, but that doesn't fit because the E wouldn't be a sharpened 6th or 7th. I know the answer is F# major but how would I know not to include the D sharp as part of the key signature in the first place?

Does that make any sense at all?

Yes.

You do include the D#. E# is the LAST sharp in the key signature for F#Major. There just doesn't happen to be an A# in the extract. (missing note)

I didn't think that F#Major was on the grade 3 list?

Sorry - I meant F sharp minor.

In that case there probably is an A in the extract and including this will show you the 'missing' sharp in the sequence.
D# and E# are the raised 6th and 7th.

GUILTY AS CHARGED !

ok, heres the deal...

if there are sharps and flats together, it's almost certainly minor
mark down any sharps/flats, and try to relate them to a key you know.

Hope this helps,
D.

If there isn't an A in the passage anywhere it would be hard to tell. But if the A natural is in there (A sharp is the 5th in the sequence of sharps FCGDAEB), then you know that the E# must be the raised 7th degree of the minor scale (so, as said, it's F# minor), because although you can have sharps FCGD but A natural, you can't have sharps FCGDE but A natural. Which is the same a shboa says, but in slightly different words. It's quite difficult to explain simply isn't it?!

EDIT - hmm, but I can see that this doesn't really answer clearly why no D# in the key signature. I can only explain it by making it sound even more complicated. But here goes anyway. If there is an A natural in the passage, we know that the E# MUST be an accidental (see explanation by shboa & above). Knowing our minor scales, that means that the E is either the 6th or 7th degree of a minor scale, those being the two degrees that get altered in harmonic or melodic minor scales. IF E was the 6th degree of a minor scale, it would have to be G# minor, but it can't be G# minor, because you've got an A natural. Therefore, the E (which has been accidentalised to E sharp in Pinkpaws' example) MUST be the 7th degree of a minor scale, and that can only be F# minor. We can then work back and say that we know that F# minor is the relative minor of A major, which only has 3 sharps, which, of course, does not include D#!

Phew. All I can say is that you haven't given a very easy example!! And that the question as to "why shouldn't the D# go in the key signature" is a VERY good one!!! I hope someone can come up with a MUCH more concise explanation.

You could try working it out by a process of elimination...

1. At G3 there are only going to be keys with a maximum of 4 sharps. Since there are five sharps in your extract, that is too many for it to be a major key, so it must be a minor key with one or more accidentals.

2. Working round the Circle of Fifths, you can rule out Am, Em and Bm because those keys have 0,1,2 sharps respectively and there are 5 sharps in your extract.

3. The next key in the Circle of Fifths is F#m. The sharpened FCG fits the key signature. The E# would fit as an accidental (the sharpened 7th of a minor scale), and the D# would also fit as an accidental (the sharpened 6th of the melodic version).

4. The only other possible option at G3 is C#m. You have the sharpened FCGD for the key signature, but the E# doesn't fit.

So you can be certain that it's the melodic version of F#m.

The way I teach most people with this type of question, is to write down the sharps/flats in correct key signature order (depending on whether there are sharps/flats in the piece). Once you've done that, you tick off the accidentals you see. If there are additional sharps then you write that next to your list. At Gr 3 it will be the sharpened seventh which will give you the name of the key (a semitone higher). The number of sharps/flats ticked off will confirm the answer. If it's a flat key, it may be that one of the flats is missing from the ones you've ticked off if it's a minor key. This again is the sharpened seventh. As driftwood says, if there are both sharps and flats, it's a minor key with the sharp being the sharpened seventh.

The D# is the sharpened 6th from the melodic form of the scale and so doesn't go in the key signature, but like the E# is an accidental.

Hope some of this helps. A good chat about it, looking at examples often works wonders!

This symbol and notation juggling produces the right answers in the context of the questions - so the advice that has been given is going to be helpful in passing written theory papers ... but I find it sad that such rote methods are learned - and sufficient - to pass exams, divorced from any real musical purpose.

It is not even a sound general method - you can't use it outside of the confines of an elementary exam - because you have to take on trust that the passage in question is in a single key (or indeed in any key at all). What if it modulates, or if it is ambiguous, hovers between tonalities, or is atonal?

What about the sounds that the symbols represent? If you PLAY (or sing) an excerpt then you will HEAR where it is headed, which note SOUNDS like the tonic, and whether it is major or minor.

It is like doing arithmetic by rules with no grasp of geometry or of different magnitudes or any skill at estimating, or like those characters in "The Big Bang Theory" trying to relate to other people through an intellectual understanding of the transactional rules of social interactions.

Knowing the underlying the theory and notation of tonality is, I do not dispute, necessary for a deeper understanding of Western music - on which matter the standard theory grades are in any case badly deficient as they do not cover the most basic question of all - that is why, from the infinity of possible tones, Western music has settled on such a small sub-set?

The whole syllabus is dry as dust and needs an inspired teacher to bring it to life and relate the theory to the development and history of our music. Or - if you are teaching yourself, then you need to read widely outside the narrowly theoretical, outside what is strictly necessary to pass an exam.

Maybe it is necessary to go through a stage of doing problems like this by rote before understanding arises? Can a more experienced teacher tell me if this is so, and if it is deliberate?

But the symbols of music are not like the symbols of mathematics. In maths you represent a problem in symbols - then by manipulating the symbols according to rules - with no necessary understanding of the intermediate stages you can generate new results - which can be interpreted back into useful relationships. In other words they are there to save you effort. Having represented an idea in symbols and rules you no longer have to think much about it.

The symbols of music are different. They represent the ideas of the composer embodied in sound. The choice of tones and relationships chosen by our culture may ultimately be mathematical, but the language of music is closer to poetry than to mathematics.

After using all the methods that everyone has mentioned, I will always execute the final step to make sure that my chosen key is correct.

I sing the melody in sol-fa. If it sounds fine, just like the kind of thing that would come out of a certain period (think they give you the composer, right?), then I am safe. If I am not wrong, most passages come from Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods, so dissonance is not a norm.

If it sounds a little strange i.e. not the usual progressions or melody does not sound so melodious, I recheck to see whether there is some note missing in the passage, causing a missing sharp/flat for the key signature.

Always works for me this way . Anybody tried this too?

I agree 100%. I've often said that you can do Grade 5 theory with no understanding whatsover of what sounds all the symbols represent. You can just learn a series of arcane rules and techniques to give a 'correct' answer, and not know what anything you've written sounds like - even the 'compositional' bit.

This discussion about F# minor is quite fun as a mental exercise - I'm all for mental exercise - but I do wonder what musical skill is being learnt. To take another analogy - I enjoy doing cryptic crosswords for the mental stimulation, but the skills required are not going to help me writing inspirational prose.

Personally I'd like to see a completely different model in which theory and aural were assessed side-by-side in the one exam, with a less narrowly classical, c. 1700-1800, syllabus. The syllabus hasn't changed in essence since I did my Grade 5 30 years ago. Of course it might have remained the same because it is already perfect, or it might be because the AB makes about £1m a year from the exams and related products, and therefore has no incentive to change it. I'd like to see some thinking 'outside the box' - but I think it's unlikely to happen, in the circumstances.

I am surprised that no-one has yet made the point that there is no key with both F and E# in it. One of three circumstances must apply:

1) It is possible to disregard one of them as an auxiliary note of some sort (unlikely, given the other notes);

2) It's not in a key;

3) Pinkpaws1277 has notated the passage ambiguously (e.g. are all the notes sharp?).

Ken - I read it that way at first and wondered why no-one else had read it that way. I wondered if it was really in the bass clef and the notes were E A B F G#. But then ...

I interpreted the quote as "I've got a line of music that has no key signature and has C# F# G# D# and E# sharp. To me that looks like E major (with having the C# F# G# and D#)." Ah.

I don't think that is what being said. The statement is ambiguous, but I think you are meant to read it like this:
"I've got a line of music that has no key signature and has (C, F, G, D and E) sharp", which is what the other respondents have done. So there could also be (A and B) natural in there as well.

Whoops - briantrumpet posted the same point while I was still typing.

Ha - beat you to it!

As there seems to be widespread agreement that the notes in question are C#, F#, G#, D# and E#, I shall try to add to the discussion on that basis.

These notes are in the keys C# major and F# major. They are clearly not in C# minor, which must have an E natural. They are not native to the key signature of F# minor, which is the same as that of A major (F#, C#, G#). They are, however, in the ascending melodic version of the F# minor scale, which has D# and E# as accidentals. There was a thread about the notes of minor keys a few weeks ago, that failed to reach a consensus.

A strict definition would argue that to establish a key, you need a perfect cadence. I can't think of a circumstance in which I would have to put a note sequence into one key.

Especially when we haven't seen or heard the actual sequence

Hmm, shall we get Pinkpaws1277 to post a scan of the passage? Then we can all try it out... Not sure if that would help...

I think we were talking about grade 3 here so it's almost the first step in learning about key.
At this stage it's about knowing the scales.

I'm surprised that such a tricky question should arise at Grade 3. Perhaps Pinkpaws is reading outside the syllabus.

Agreed: essential basic information.