How to Find Your Key Part III: Points of Consideration

If you don’t yet understand the concept of “key” in music, please read Part I of the series. If you’re looking for your key, check out Part II of the series. If you’re wondering if a key change is right for you on a particular song, read on!

Point of Consideration 1: What style or feeling are you trying to convey?

I mentioned in part 2 that I highly recommend adjusting song keys to fit your voice and to support the way you want to sing. One important point of consideration is: What style or feeling are you trying to convey with the song? How does the selected key complement the chosen style or feeling?

As an example, if you have a treble voice, and want to sing Demi Lovato’s Skyscraper, but with an acoustic guitar in a coffeehouse setting, the first thing you are probably going to do is lower the key of the song. Coffeehouse style is usually characterized by calm vibes and vocal warmth and those things might be hard to achieve in Demi’s original key, which was chosen to showcase her vocal intensity. I’m not saying it’s impossible to achieve gentle results in the original key, in fact it may open doors for interesting registration choices! Take it as a challenge if you want. I’m only saying that changing a key can be a useful tool when adjusting the style of an existing song.  

Point of Consideration 2: Am I trying to retain the registration choices of the original singer?

Another reason to change the key of an existing song might be to retain the registration choices and vocal colors used by the original singer. For example, if you have thicker folds and therefore a "heavier" voice, and you want to sing Hero by Mariah Carey, but you want to retain her chest-dominant belty vocal quality that she brought to the original recording. Most people with thicker vocal folds will need to lower the key a bit, so that they can sing in the same silky smooth and then powerhouse registers Mariah used. Otherwise, they might find themselves stuck in their weakest registers during the biggest moments of the song.

Point of Consideration 3: Am I scared of the key?

If you are currently working on your vocal technique and your goal is to grow your range and vocal power, changing keys to put the song in a “comfortable” place might not be the right choice for you. Try not to use key changing as an excuse to avoid challenging yourself. Growing your technique requires stepping outside of your comfort zone. You might not shine in the key your voice teacher or coach selects for you for a while and that’s ok. Keep on training, keep up with your exercises. You can and will grow.

For all of you auditioning singers out there who are also in the midst of vocal training, you might find it’s a good idea to have some of your audition songs in two keys: your current audition-ready key (lower), and your ambitious key (higher). The ambitious key is the one you practice and will one day perhaps commit to, and the current key is the one you are confident you can nail now. The lower key might also be for when you aren’t feeling 100% well, or when you have to wake up at 4am and stand in line outside in the cold for hours before you are seen for an audition in New York City.

Point of Consideration 4: Song-Specific Constraints and Logistics

Another important consideration when it comes to key is that Opera and Broadway Show keys are usually pretty set in stone. This may be because of copyright issues and show-specific requirements set by the publishers. Moreover, Opera and Broadway singers are usually performing with a group (sometimes a very large group) of live musicians who are all reading instrument-specific sheet music that is printed in the established keys. It is complicated, labor-intensive, and expensive to change the key of all of those instrumental parts. For more specific information, consult with your director or vocal coach about this topic.

When a major artist is looking for a new song to record, they often listen to many demos made by songwriters. These songwriters often spend a lot of time and money on fully producing the demo tracks. So, if the demo track of the song a major artist has chosen to record is already in a key that works fine for them, they might not go through the trouble of changing it, which would require rerecording and reconstruction of the track and the existing background vocals. Listen to the demo version of Butterflies by Floetry, and then the finished version of Butterflies by Michael Jackson. You’ll notice the track is very similar and the key is unchanged even though Michael’s voice is very different from the songwriter’s voice. That being said, this is very specific to the producer and musicians you are working with and where in the process you are at as a recording artist, so always consult with your producer and your musicians.

Another consideration in a live performance is what keys the instrumentalists are comfortable playing in. It’s relatively easy for a guitar player to change key with a capo, but it’s potentially much more awkward for, say, a pianist. String players tend to prefer sharp keys to flat keys because of the nature of their instrument. Most folk instruments (like the harmonica) are limited in the keys they can play in, so you can’t just change the key of the song on a whim unless you have the right instrument on hand. However, it’s worth mentioning that if a key change takes an accompanying instrument below its lowest playable note, you simply won’t hear that note anymore. All that being said, many professional instrumentalists are well-equipped to change the key of a song at a moment's notice, so always consult with your instrumentalist(s).

The Right Key Lets You SHINE

I hope you have found this series on key informative and interesting! At the end of the day, when it comes to your finished performance, the right key for a song is the one that lets you shine on the song.  Don’t worry about choosing a key where you sing your absolute highest note, or choosing a key because Judy Garland sang in it. When it comes to your performance make the choice that is right for you, right now. That choice might change over time, and that’s ok. Your audience will thank you and you’ll have more fun!