How to Find Your Key Part II: What is Your Key?

For more information about the concept of a song’s “key,” please read Part I of this series.

There is a myth circulating that everyone has a key that is the best key for their voice. It isn’t true, and it’s fairly easy to debunk.

The truth: Each time a professional singer begins to work on a new song the key has to be decided for that particular song. Sometimes the key will be adjusted up or down multiple times as the song is developed before it is released. Often, all of the songs a singer performs in one concert will be in the full array of keys since the high notes, low notes, and desired vocal qualities change from song to song.

Just look at Whitney Houston’s early output and the variety in the keys she was singing in, so we can put this myth to bed:

• I Wanna Dance With Somebody: Gb major
• Didn’t We Almost Have It All: Bb major
• So Emotional: G major
• Where Do Broken Hearts Go: D major
• Saving All My Love: A major

Same voice, yet many different keys. There’s only one repeat key in this list of hits. So no, you don’t need to find one key to sing all your songs in.

Every voice is unique

The physical proportions of your instrument play a major role in determining how high or low your voice “sits.” Singers with larger larynxes and longer vocal folds will have lower voices than singers with smaller larynxes and shorter vocal folds. In the same way, a cello is larger and sounds lower than a violin. Many people have larynxes and vocal folds comparable in size to how Whitney Houston’s were. However, since she trained to sing in the extremes of her vocal registers, it’s considered very technically impressive for someone with a similar range to hers to perform a Whitney Houston song in her key successfully.

Perhaps your voice sits a little lower than Whitney’s, and your range is more similar to Toni Braxton’s or even lower, like Luther Vandross’s — but you still want to perform a song of Whitney’s similar to how she performed it. You may want to find keys that work for your voice just as well as Whitney’s keys worked for her voice. It is not only acceptable to make this key adjustment, but I highly recommend doing it. After all, you want to sound your best so both your voice and the song can really shine.

That being said... The voice CAN be trained!

The human voice is extremely flexible and can be trained to stretch wide ranges. Sometimes, a key seems extremely uncomfortable when you try to sing it without practice. However, if you have the knowledge and the skills to navigate your own voice, what seems to be impossible at first may be manageable with practice. Consult with your voice teacher if you have questions about this!

Understand your own voice... and OWN IT!

Asking Luther Vandross to sing a Whitney Houston song in her original key would be like asking a cellist to play a violin piece. Cellos and violins are both extremely sophisticated and versatile instruments but cellos are built much larger, with longer strings, than violins. The cello would be able to play some of the violin pieces, way up high, but it will probably yield a different timbre and feeling than if the pieces were played by a violin. The point is, sometimes it is helpful to consider what feels more comfortable for you to sing rather than trying to sing in the key the original singer sang with.

Luckily for us, technology has made the business of getting sheet music printed in your key incredibly easy and cheap. Once you figure out the key you want to sing a song in, you can easily find the sheet music online, change it to the key that suits you with a single click, and print it out in minutes. As recently as the 2000s and early 2010s, you’d have to give a music copyist several hours and maybe a couple hundred dollars to create sheet music in your key for a song that was printed in a different key. Now it’s often a cinch to print music in a custom key and costs less than $10!