If you’re familiar with jazz harmony, you know that what I’ve described is a song in C- mixolydian, and there’s a bit of a debate as to how it should be notated. ![]() What’s the best way to write this? If I notate the key signature as one flat, the performer will get the mistaken impression that the music is moving toward an F-major or D-minor key center, but if I leave the key signature as no sharps or flats, I’ll have to write in the accidentals throughout the score. However, this same piece of music doesn’t have a single B-natural in the music – they’re all B-flats, as if the music were in F-major (one flat). It wants to resolve towards this harmony, it keeps returning there throughout the piece, and the music sounds most completed and at ease when it reaches this harmony. The question is what to do in the odd circumstance when a song isn’t in a minor or major key, but rather, is modal.įor instance, you can imagine a piece of music where the key center is clearly C-major. Most of the time, these two purposes of key signatures (eliminating accidentals and indicating the key center) are not at odds with each other – they overlap nicely. It helps the performer know where the music is going and what it’s ultimately moving towards. Most of the time, the last chord of a song is the most satisfying resolution of the harmonic tension – it’s a way to say to the listener, “The tension is resolved, the song has a satisfying ending.” A key signature should reflect the music’s key center. This is why for most songs, the quickest way to figure out its key center is to look at the last chord. The “key center” of a song is the place that the music tends to want to move towards that creates the most satisfying conclusion of the harmonic tension. It’s this harmonic give and take, this tension and release that makes the music exciting to the listener’s ear. ![]() In almost all music, there’s a repeated harmonic tension and release, tension and release, tension and release throughout the song. ![]() While this is true, a key signature also serves a second, more crucial function than saving ink and clutter: it indicates to the performer the “key center” that the music is in. When we take music lessons growing up, we’re taught that the purpose of a key signature is to avoid having to write all the sharps and flats in the music – that we can just put those sharps and flats at the beginning of the staff, and then we don’t have to repeatedly clutter up the music with accidentals (sharps and flats). One of the frequent questions I get from clients regards the proper use of key signatures.
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