DO THIS If You Write Everything In The SAME KEY!
Are you a songwriter?
...or at least part-of-a-song writer? Riff writer? Improviser?
(Our standards for today's lessons are not too high. You can make it! lol)
Do you always feel like whenever you write music, it always ends up being in the same key, or same 2 or 3 keys?
You may not like it, but this is because you are no good. But it’s ok, I can fix you.
Fact is, almost every musician at some point or another has struggled with being no good.
Many musicians have actually enjoyed incredibly successful careers while being no good. Jim Morrison, Bob Dylan, Lars Ulrich, the list goes on.
Hell, AC/DC’s entire discography probably just uses four chords total and look at them.
(... If you are already replying to this email in anger, I recommend changing the batteries to your Irony Detector)
What this all means is that being no good is realistically not going to have much of an impact on your potential career!
But…. I can totally understand why you might still want to expand your colour palette a little bit and learn how to play in a few more keys :-)
So what should you do?
What you should do is go at the link below, and I’ll explain to you exactly how you can write music in way more keys, so you can finally start impressing your friends with your ability to play in something-that-is-not-A-minor.
...because that is something that people are impressed by. Suuure.
Maybe instead of just writing in more keys, you always want to move between different keys within your songs? If so, look no further. Check out my Modulation Mastery guitar course to learn how to modulate to any key, from any key.
Video Transcription
Hello Internet, so nice to see you! A lot of us guitar players play everything in the same handful of keys. We play everything in E minor, or in E, or in A, or in A minor, or in C major, in D major, maybe, or G major, because those keys are the easiest on the guitar.
And at the same time, you hear a lot of people on YouTube telling you, you should play everything in every key, okay? You should know all the keys of your instrument. And then a lot of people kind of develop this inferiority complex, like, I'm a guitar player, but I can play only in three keys.
What do I do, okay? Well, tell you what. So what if you play everything in E minor? Why would you even want to play in different keys, okay? So, a student asked me this exact question. And my answer is, do you want to play in different keys?
It depends on exactly what you want to do. So let's see what I answered to the student, and what you can do if you actually want to play in all the keys on this instrument. When I come up with ideas for songs, I feel stuck in one key.
And as I focus on metal music, it's really often E minor key. One part is that I like the sound of it, but I want to explore more, what can I do more, not just be in one key, but what could be some interesting choices, or where to start, because I know there are probably thousands of choices you can do.
So where to start, how to approach it. Okay, there is a legend that says, and again, I don't know if it's true, it's a legend, that says that Bach composed everything in his life in D major and D minor, and only then transpose everything in different keys.
And that there is a second legend that says that the well-tempered Clavier, it was him trying to break out of this limitation. He still composed everything in the imager and the minor, but just wanted to see how the whole thing was working.
I don't think the second legend is true. I'm not sure about the first, honestly. But at the same time, you can do that. I mean, if all your ideas for a song come in E or minor, compose your song in E or minor, that's what you're familiar with, and later transpose it.
I mean, you want to transpose it because, I mean, if you have a live set and then you have six, seven songs in E, it starts to show, okay? And you want some changes. But I mean, you can simply just transpose them after the fact.
It's a bit more work. Yeah, maybe. No, say no. Okay. But that's one thing you can do. Second thing you can do is instead, start thinking about other keys that are something that have something going on for them, meaning, for instance, I like a lot C sharp minor, which I know is the same as E major, okay, because I have all the open strings that I can use and they create an interesting sound.
I also like a lot G sharp minor, because of other open strings you can use, so you can start thinking what keys gives me some interesting open strings to work with, and then you can start learning those keys, okay, but there is not written anywhere in the composer charter, then you have to be able to compose in more than one key, okay, composing any key you want to transpose.
So that will be the skeleton of my answers, actually, okay, that's the gist of it. Either you're composing your key or transpose, or you learn other keys because they offer you something specific, okay, if you were writing either for non-equal temperament music, so yeah, you have some people that are tuned in just intonation, etc., or for instruments that are not in equal temperament, because sometimes you have only one instrument out,
and that kind of thing, then yes, you have to learn all the keys because the different keys will sound different, because the intervals are not all the same, but if you're composing equal temperament, which is honestly what all of us do at the end of the day, because very, very lazy people actually go down that rabbit hole, and rightly so, because the difference is not as much, then again, you can simply just transpose.
There is a second level to everything here. Some keys sound different than if you arrange them for specific instruments. For instance, if you want to write a very, very sad piece and arrange it for string quartet, or in general for strings, C minor and F minor, are your keys.
Why? Because first of all they have to use all stop notes because all the open strings are not good for those keys and this makes the sound darker and second the specific ranges of the instrument naturally give you some voicing, specifically to stay in the range, that tend to sound sadder, the more desperate and all this kind of thing because of the intervals and in it, okay?
So if you know all that or if you hear about some of that, then you can still compose your piece in D minor, which is not the saddest of all keys, okay, like, but you, and then you transpose it in F minor or C minor when you arrange it for strings.
Okay. That's something that is very done very, very commonly. Okay. To the point that some people we compose the whole thing in D minor say the theme in D minor, maybe arrange it for D minor, for guitar or for piano etc, then write a long modulation until they get to F minor or C minor and then the strings come in or the strings come in during the modulation and take the same theme in that other key,
okay, very utilitarian as you want, there's an idea, okay, it just write every section in the key that is more appropriate for that instrumentation and then write modulations to join those sections, okay, if you're arranging the same piece for brass quartet, okay, it would not be C minor or F minor because it would be something else, makes sense, yeah, so that's how the whole thing would work, but if you're only on guitar or guitar and bass,
so if it's for rock band for instance, just compose it as first, could it be away and like make modulations or like being in E minor key then go to any other key and go back or maybe not, yes, absolutely, and where, how to study that or how to explore that, where to where to start with this, you do know I just launched a course in modulation, I just launched this course modulation mastery, thank you for the question,
you're checking the mail, I just launched this course modulation mastery, okay, it takes you from knowing nothing about modulation to being able to do very complex modulation, we do them on the instrument, so you see how everything works on the guitar and I'm also showing you all the possible variations for every system I'm showing you, so I'm literally giving you five, six, seven, ten, planning situation,
different modulation per video and every session is three videos, and I'm guiding you through how I build these, all the options that you can build your own, okay, so if you want to learn how this works and really make it customizable for yourself and your music.
That's the course. For most composers, they compose the theme and then the modulation is the boring, enjoying part. I don't want this to be the boring, enjoying part. You follow this course, you're gonna look forward to the moment where you modulate because that's the moment they're like, hey, I can express myself here.
I know all the possible options, okay? It's gonna be your favorite part, okay? So that will be how you study modulation. Perfect, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Tom.