What's the best program to find a song's key?

**Sn0wday** · 03-19-2012, 08:31 PM

Everyone talkign about doing it by ear, doesn't it atke years of practice to learn to play/hear keys by ear? I can't IMAGINE how one could do that easily.

**deevey** · 03-19-2012, 08:57 PM

Originally Posted by Sn0wday

Everyone talkign about doing it by ear, doesn't it atke years of practice to learn to play/hear keys by ear? I can't IMAGINE how one could do that easily.

If you can't tell the differences between the keys by ear then harmonic mixing is irrelevant anyhow

There's only 12 keys, not rocket science

label a piano with them, and play along with the song, if it sounds right you have your key.... if you really want to do it manually that is.

**123xyz** · 03-19-2012, 10:06 PM

so what do you guys do if both programs are showing 2 different keys? manually match it by ear?

i need a fast and accurate method guys, and no i dont play guitar or piano lol

**mostapha** · 03-19-2012, 10:25 PM

Originally Posted by Sn0wday

Everyone talkign about doing it by ear, doesn't it atke years of practice to learn to play/hear keys by ear? I can't IMAGINE how one could do that easily.

Nope. It depends on how you learn. I'm not good by any stretch of the imagination, but the people who taught me guitar and I started jamming after a couple weeks. It did help that it wasn't my first instrument.

I guess I really don't know what it's like trying to DJ without already knowing a good deal about music. When I first touched a turntable, I'd been recorded in more than one studio (voice), had been in several auditioned ensembles (voice), could at least bang out chords on a keyboard, and could play basic 4/4 rock drums…and had given up viola and saxophone for various reasons……mostly bad teachers forcing me to play music I didn't give a shit about……I think I quit each one when I realized that scale exercises were the only enjoyable parts of my lessons and it was easier than finding a different teacher. Thank goodness that didn't happen when I started learning guitar (a few years after I started DJing).

But, seriously it takes about a week to learn how to tune a guitar, what a power chord is, and how to move them around the fretboard……and to develop the finger strength to actually pretend to play that way……even if you're a complete n00b and have never touched an instrument before.

Ever played smoke on the water on guitar hero? It's honestly harder than playing it on an actual guitar. And finding what key a song is in is even easier than that……and it's about the second easiest song ever written (#1 would be Louie Louie…3 chords instead of 4 and no changes anywhere in the song). IDK…maybe I just really suck at GH. There are songs on it that I can't beat on Medium that I can actually play.

Originally Posted by deevey

If you can't tell the differences between the keys by ear then harmonic mixing is irrelevant

Bing.

Step 1 is to be able to hear a key clash in your headphones.

There is no step 2 unless you want things to be more complicated than they have to be, and a $40 used acoustic, a $10 tuner, and a single $10 guitar lesson will get you better results than MiK……the only difference is that you actually have to do something instead of telling your computer to do something and then wandering off for a day.

**Jack Rabid** · 03-19-2012, 10:52 PM

Originally Posted by mostapha

Ever played smoke on the water on guitar hero? It's honestly harder than playing it on an actual guitar.

True story. I am terrible at guitar, and I got it down faster on guitar than it took to put the guitar on and turn on my amp (maybe a small exaggeration but the point stands)

I'd be interested as to where to start picking up on key (by ear) without having to use an instrument. I don't own a keyboard for production yet and my guitar is back home. I know Beatport sells some of the songs with the key tags, but tbh I don't necessarily trust Beatport when it comes to accuracy sometimes. Honestly I'd imagine i can just sit down and listen to music that I know the key of, but I don't want to do that with music I'm not really interested in. I guess I can run it through key detecting software and match it to that, but if I can learn it by ear, than buying MiK would be pointless. :P

**mostapha** · 03-20-2012, 01:12 AM

You can train yourself to hear certain tones with tuning forks. But it's a huge PITA, especially if you don't have good pitch anyway. It might be worth doing if you want a career as a session vocalist in Nashville, but for DJing, it's a complete waste of time. Then again…I think key tagging is a complete waste of time. Just listen to your music.

Side note…

I've known one vocalist who could separate a semitone into 7 equal subdivisions. Considering the math involved, they weren't actually "equal" in a raw sense, but they were based on the same math the chromatic scales is…just with 84 tones per octave instead of 12. He could just tell you what key something was in. He could also transcribe things to sheet music at full speed (plus filling in pieces afterwards from memory and occasionally re-listening to parts) depending on how many instruments were involved.

I'll never forget the day we were practicing an a'capella piece for a performance. He was playing keyboard on some other pieces. The Tenors (it's always the tenors) had drifted some and needed to hear a pitch. He was playing with the keyboard (something that did synth sounds in addition to just a sampled piano) in headphones and had it set so it wouldn't really give a tone they could tune to. So he just sang it. Correctly.

He was basically a church/high school chorus pianist and organist…and he was one of the most talented musicians I've ever met.

This chorus was also the one that used to do all our warmups in E just because the director thought it was funny that the train that occasionally came by played an E Major triad as its whistle……and if it happened to come by while we were warming up, we could tune to the train. We usually started without a reference so he could train us to hear that pitch. I can still hear it in my head.

**deevey** · 03-20-2012, 01:34 AM

I'd be interested as to where to start picking up on key (by ear) without having to use an instrument. I don't own a keyboard for production yet and my guitar is back home. I know Beatport sells some of the songs with the key tags, but tbh I don't necessarily trust Beatport when it comes to accuracy sometimes. Honestly I'd imagine i can just sit down and listen to music that I know the key of, but I don't want to do that with music I'm not really interested in. I guess I can run it through key detecting software and match it to that, but if I can learn it by ear, than buying MiK would be pointless. :P

MIK and Keyfinder work "most" of the time, you are listen to the tracks that should work together in the headphones first anyhow - if they clash, then the key is obv wrong and you have two options. Re-key it or "Transpose" (the knob in traktor) to the right key, if you can't hear the clash then again the harmonic mixing goes out the window.

Theres TONS of on-screen keyboards which will give you the keys you need so no need to shell out the cash on a physical keyboard for learning purposes.