1/6/2009
The Color of Key
by Gary Powell
Emma Kate Tsai, an often contributor to my site, has posed this excellent question regarding the perceived color of tonal centers:
Yes Emma, composers have always talked about the idea that the key of E Minor does not “feel” the same as Eb Minor even though they are only a half-step apart. There is often agreement that tonal centers on black keys have a darker tone than tonal centers on white keys. It’s possible that this perceived audio difference is more visual, and even tactile as well, in that the pianists’ fingering shifts deeper into the keyboard when playing black keys. As an antidote to this, I encourage myself to compose in all keys to eliminate compositional patterns that one develops when playing only in Bb Major, for instance. If a songwriter or composer does notice that she prefers certain tonal centers or keys, like I mentioned, it may be more about muscle memory, which comes from familiarity with chord voicing in certain keys, than about any measurable or even perceived auditory color differences. I do hold, however unreliable the science is, that we can and do perceive a difference in the tonal nature of the keys we choose to play in.
Studies show that people with perfect pitch hear the character of a pitch instead of what we generally assume; that they are simply hearing the frequency. This is one argument to support the idea different keys do indeed express a unique tonal color or quality. Much of my knowledge on the related topic of perfect pitch comes from my old friend Rae Moses, another frequent contributor to my site. Rae is the Director of Choral Music for Carl Fischer Music and a concert pianist who has perfect pitch. I hope Rae will add his take on this topic with a comment below.
“The fingers tend to be a little bit predictable unless led by the brain.” Brian May, Guitarist for Queen – As an aside, in 2007, Brian May received his PhD in Astrophysics.
I truly suspect that these tonal preferences are born from a mix of an unmeasured sense or feeling, a simple habit, or the shape of an individual’s hand, or a player’s eye sight, or that the piano stool was too low when we were young, making the flat keys harder to reach. We are indeed complex beings.
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How does the “Color of Key” effect what we hear and why do we prefer to play in one key over another? http://tinyurl.com/89dtz3
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Filed by Gary Powell at 12:23 pm under Music Lecture & Seminar Topics
3 Comments
How does culture affect our pereceived key color? Maybe if fugues from Dracula movies were in major keys we’d associate major with dark , evil and somber. There is a defined emotional response to minor keys, but I don’t know if that is because of culture or the key itself.
Thanks for quoting me and this is a fascinating topic. Are there books on this? There should be? I wonder about the dark vs. light notion of music, as well as the color of tone. Interesting, but one struggle I had with my music course was how to write about it and how to conceptualize written concepts as auditory.
Singer Ayana Haviv suggested this site for further investigation:
http://www.syn.sussex.ac.uk/
“Synaesthesia is a joining together of sensations that are normally experienced separately. Some synaesthetes experience colours when they hear or read words, whilst others may experience tastes, smells, shapes or touches in almost any combination.”