A reference track, a beat you bought, a song you want to cover, remix or mix into. Before you write a note over it, you need its key. Here are three ways to find it, from the free one to the fast one.
By ear: find the note that feels like home
- Loop the chorus. It is the part most likely to sit firmly in the key.
- Hum or play single notes until one sounds finished: the note the music wants to come back to. That's the tonic.
- Play the major third above it, then the minor third. The one that fits tells you the mode.
The bass line is the best guide. Bass parts land on the tonic at the ends of phrases far more often than melodies do.
At a keyboard: follow the bass
Play along with the bass notes of the chorus. Write down the four or five you hit most. They nearly always belong to one major or minor scale, and the note the phrases end on is its tonic.
With an analyser: one drop
Drop the file on DropWave, on a Mac or a Windows PC, and read the key, its Camelot code and how sure it is. Our own track 01 Low Orbit reads F minor, 4A, confidence High, tuned 1 cent from A = 440 Hz, at 140.00 BPM. That takes well under a second, and nothing is uploaded.
Four checks before you trust it
1. How sure is it?
DropWave reads the key across the whole song and says how many sections agree. High means they did. Medium or Low means part of the song points somewhere else, so listen before you commit.
2. Is the runner-up the relative key?
F minor and A♭ major use exactly the same notes. So do every minor key and the major key three semitones above it. On the Camelot wheel they share a number: 4A and 4B. When the call between them is close, DropWave names the other one, and your ear decides which one the song resolves to.
3. Is the song in tune with A = 440?
Plenty of records are tuned a little sharp or flat. DropWave measures the tuning first and shows it in cents, so a song 30 cents off still reads as its real key instead of the one next door.
4. Does it stay in one key?
Many songs lift into a new key for the last chorus. DropWave shows each section with its own key and where it starts; here's how to spot a key change.
Hear it before you build on it
Press Hear key and DropWave plays the key as a chord, at the song's own tuning. If it sits with the track, you have your key. If it fights, try the runner-up.