Major & minor keys in swing music
Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2003 7:40 am
The vast majority of the swing music I hear is played in a major key. Do you have any idea why?
Any major chord that you build can be turned into a minor chord. All you do is lower the third by a half step. Major keys are not of themselves any more or less flexible than minor keys, as you can tell if you've ever heard a major-key song turned into a minor-key progression.Yakov wrote:
As to why most songs are in major keys: To me it seems like major keys are more harmonically flexible. That is, you have a lot more options chordwise. That could be part of the reason.
**regarding blues scales: the "blue notes" are in fact neither minor nor major. on the keyboard (in the key of C), the "blue notes" would be unplayably BETWEEN E and E-flat, and again BETWEEN B and B-flat. Of course, you can only hear the note on instruments on which the tuning is more flexible by the player (most visibly on the trombone ferinstance, but true for all wind instruments). That's maybe why you get blues pianists playing those patterns where the finger falls from the Eb to the E, to approximate where the "blue note" is.
Here's a good page that is at a level at little less advanced than what Yakov is posting at: http://www.guitarmain.com/m_gloss.htmlmorte100 wrote:So, this is a pretty technical discussion of all this, and it's mostly over my non-music major head. however, I will say that I've always been attracted to songs that I've perceived to be in a minor key. Now, whether they are or not, I couldn't say for sure. "Golden Earrings" is an example of a song which I intuitively believe to be in a minor key.
For the less technical among us, could some of you list additional swing songs that are in minor? I hope it will help me better understand this thread.
_david
thanks for posting about AABA form - I'd say it was pretty common that the bridge (B) would be in a different key than the chorus (A) so it can be distinguished as the bridge right? And often it would be minor if the chorus was major and vice versus.......Yakov wrote:By the way, in case all this "switching" talk is confusing, let me make a note on music forms... traditional "song form" (stretching back to the 1600s and earlier) is AABA, which repeats -- AABA, AABA, AABA in jazz. "I've Got Rhythm" is a classic example: