If you see a set of chords that only has one dominant 7 among them, there’s a pretty good chance that that chord is the V.ĥ. If we look at the extended chords that show up diatonically ( diatonic = made up of only notes from within the key), we see that there’s only one that’s a dominant 7 chord: the V. And of course if the song changes to a new key somewhere along the way, that’s going to complicate matters.įor a printable PDF of this chart, click here.There are plenty of songs that purposely end on a chord other than the I (which gives the ending an unsettled feeling).LOTS of songs don’t start on the I chord.If you’re learning a song from a recording, or reading a chart written by a less-than-literate musician, you can look at the first & last chords of the song-they’re frequently the I chord. What are the first & last chords in the song? Of course, if someone says, “this is a blues in G” or “we’re playing Dock of the Bay, but in F,” you’ll obviously know what to do.ģ. F# and Gb are the same key, just with a different name (and different names for each of the notes). In this example, one flat means that the song is in F. On a chart written by a literate musician, there will be key signature-some number of sharps or flats between the clef and the time signature: Probably the easiest way to determine what key you’re in is when the written music tells you the key. I’m going to explain each of these in order, but I want to begin by saying that you should be going through this checklist in this order when trying to determine a song’s key.ġ. Does it even make sense to think of this as being in one key?.Can this be written in more than one key?.Are most of the chords diatonic to a key, with some non-diatonic (but not entirely unexpected) chords sprinkled in?.Are all the chords diatonic to a certain key?.Is there another clear chordal movement that’s a key giveaway?.
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