does anyone have a favourite key to play in?! or a key they hate playing in. obvioulsy most people like C major and dread Bb minor pieces but my worst is usually Eb major! i cant stand it- a study i once did for an exam was in Eb and i got 16/30 haha any sight reading i get given in that key is awful! i much prefer Bb minor!lol

On piano I find that Eb major usually lies very comfortably under the fingers

Bb major on the other hand.......
I generally prefer playing in flat keys rather than sharp ones.

Keys are not a problem for me. However, I think that every keys has its own special features and mood!

i'd prefere c minor and b major..

I like minor keys usually C and G minor. C major is easiest to play on the viola so i like that 1 too!
jess

i love d minor. and i love d harmonic minor scale.

Ab major is a really nice key on the flute and f major and g minor are nice on treble recorder

QUOTE (sbhoa @ Jul 28 2004, 11:20 PM)

I generally prefer playing in flat keys rather than sharp ones.

ditto
i wonder why..?

B major

Maggie

I loath any piece for recorder that has flats. It's simply because I find Bb such an awkward fingering.

For flute my nemisis is G minor, not being able to play F#3 with the Bb thumb key is a pain!

QUOTE (sbhoa @ Jul 28 2004, 11:20 AM)

Bb major on the other hand.......

yes Bb major used to be a bit of a nasty one! but im getting the hang of it now! Eb major is worse, i find, on the clarinet. yuck yuck yuck!!

tamsin- i love Bb on the recorder!!

I like 'flat' keys too, and almost every piece of music I like and can play from memory is in a minor key!Pieces in major keys just don't stick in my head, I learn them, my teacher says 'well done', we go on to do something else and I forget them. She's actually started to suggest that I always have a 'major' piece on the go, otherwise I would play things in minor keys all the time.

Suppose it shows a melancholic treak in my nature. I often play the to myself piano at break time when I'm at local Am Dram group, and am always being acused of playing depressing music!

I think my favorites have to be G min, which seems really dark to me, and A min which I think of as being more icy cold. Like C min and G#min, but not sure how to describe them - G#min seems quite exotic and haunting.

When I was really small (less than 5) my parents used to play the musical that includes "You'll never walk alone" (can't remember what the show's called). The sound of it used to *terrify* me. They never knew what was wrong. Our Am Dram group did a show this spring that included a performance of it by one of our best singers and it really got to me again. There's a couple of chords in there that I still find frightening!!!

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I generally prefer playing in flat keys rather than sharp ones.   ditto i wonder why..?

me too!
i sed Ab is nice on flute but ahh too hard on piano for me!

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QUOTE (sbhoa @ Jul 28 2004, 11:20 PM) I generally prefer playing in flat keys rather than sharp ones.   ditto i wonder why..?

I find that the the hand shapes are more natural for me on the piano... if that makes sense..

I like c major and d major on the flute and violin.

QUOTE (clarinetlover @ Jul 29 2004, 12:33 PM)

QUOTE (sbhoa @ Jul 28 2004, 11:20 AM) Bb major on the other hand....... yes Bb major used to be a bit of a nasty one! but im getting the hang of it now! Eb major is worse, i find, on the clarinet. yuck yuck yuck!! tamsin- i love Bb on the recorder!!

I love Eb major or the viola, I just feel that it sits so nicely on it.

It depends on what instrument I'm playing!

On the viola, my fave keys are C major, G major and D major. On the flute, it's D major and F major.

i cannot stand anything with 4 or more sharps/flats

It doesn't matter for me as long as it is not too complicated!!

I love the sound of C# minor but it doesn't lie easily under the fingers!!!

hi

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i love d minor. and i love d harmonic minor scale.

i agree, theres just somethin about it, most of my best compositions have been in d minor.

on the otherhand......... E minor has it's qualities (looks back at painful experience involving dramatic playing of the e minor chord) who thought that a fire extinguisher would cause soooo much trouble........

*comes out of daze* anyway.........

see you all!!!
jaime

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i agree, theres just somethin about it, most of my best compositions have been in d minor

Mine tend to be in... F# major... I suppose you can guess that doesn't go down too well with the performers!

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who thought that a fire extinguisher would cause soooo much trouble........

i love the key of Gmajor

when im jsut playing around on the piano, relaxing, my fingers always go to play Gmajor chords and the others in that key!

i actually just love the G major chord!!!

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QUOTE   who thought that a fire extinguisher would cause soooo much trouble........

oh yes......... lol

well at our school there is this very camp lad that insists on makin your day bad and gloomy, but actually he is really quite funny to watch....... anyway, one day in the joyess rooms off what we call a music corridor this lad interupts me and my friends rehearsing, so as we do we started to agrivate him more and more....... eventuallly he got the fire extinguisher and started attackin us wiv it. the music off the piano was flying everywhere, there was just a mist of smoke everywhere, then out of nowhere he runs towards me wiv the fire extinguisher blowiung it at me.......... at this point my friend is playing dramatic chords of e minor on the piano. i pick up the now disgarded fire extinguisher and attack him back just as two heads of years walk in (including my own) and to other members of staff

well i got banned from the music department (not for long may i add) and then all lived happy ever.

there you go!!!! any other mad stories to share???

jaime

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when im jsut playing around on the piano, relaxing, my fingers always go to play Gmajor chords and the others in that key!

that seems to be true for violin as well, because the g major chord G-D-B-G across all four strings is very easy and you tend to see people walking along with their violins strumming this chord on the fingerboard like a guitar!!! Sometimes they also do Gmaj- Dmaj- Gmaj so it sounds like a perfect cadence thing, G-D-B-G, D-A-F#, G-D-B-G... over and over again...

This is what I figure: We (or I anyway) tend to think of the black keys as C#, Eb, F# and Bb rather than Db and so on, and G#/Ab we can think of as both. I therefore (on the piano) don't mind anything up to three sharps or flats - anything else requires too much thinking.

Having said that I don't mind harder keys, they're just harder to read. And F# major's not so bad because all of them bar one are sharps...

On the clarinet... I haven't been playing long enough to have a favourite key. C major's all good

I'd have to say that I really like D minor and D major. Just something about the sound of it.
And like Jaime, all my best compositions ave been in D minor.

i love all the minor keys... sad person...i am...

QUOTE (missfabflute @ Jul 29 2004, 11:02 PM)

i cannot stand anything with 4 or more sharps/flats

who does?!

F has got to be mine. i hate Bb.
in my school band i have to transpose and transposing to Bb to macth the trumpets is HORRIBLE! luckly one was in F so it was easy!

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well at our school there is this very camp lad that insists on makin your day bad and gloomy, but actually he is really quite funny to watch....... anyway, one day in the joyess rooms off what we call a music corridor this lad interupts me and my friends rehearsing, so as we do we started to agrivate him more and more....... eventuallly he got the fire extinguisher and started attackin us wiv it. the music off the piano was flying everywhere, there was just a mist of smoke everywhere, then out of nowhere he runs towards me wiv the fire extinguisher blowiung it at me.......... at this point my friend is playing dramatic chords of e minor on the piano. i pick up the now disgarded fire extinguisher and attack him back just as two heads of years walk in (including my own) and to other members of staff

Reminds me of an incident, all due to my flute, at my own (ex)school.

You see, my (ex) school is on two sides of a very busy mainish road, and we have a bridge we are suposed to always use, for our own sarety etc. Under no circumstances are students suposed to cross said road, even though the teachers do all the time (The only time the teachers used the bridge, was as a lookout point to catch students crossing the road!)

Anyway, one day I left my flute in one of the classrooms on thw wrong side of the road, and had climbed over the bridge etc before realising I had. It was going to take me three times as long to go back over the bridge as to cross the road. being already late for the next lesson, I decided~ for the first (and only) time in my school career~ to risk crossing the road.

I gotback to the other side, and picked up my flute, without incident. However, returning to make the second crossing my headteacher appeared from one side of the road, and my form tutor/head of year from the other. I couldnt believe my luck, the only time I ever crossed that stupid road and I got caught between two high authority teachers who couldn't fail to identify me...

The funny thing is, they both must have been blind, because the expected detention slip never appeared in the regester- suffice to say, I never risked crossing the road again!

And that wasnt the only time I've left my flute in awkward places. The chemistry lab I was visting on a college open day included, the fus to get it back again after that...

I love the soud of D major.It is nice.But I felt that b flat minor is hard to play......

Favourite: D Major
Least Favourite: Anything with more flats than Ab I can cope with sharps but not flats

My favourite [and most comfortable scale) is G minor , but in terms of sound, it has to be the dark timbres of b-flat and e-flat minors (melodic and harmonic) . are there keys that people just really don't like? I'm not a fan of the sound of C major.

I LOVE PALYING IN A MINOR !!!!!!!!!!

I love Dminor. I don't really know why...

It is not too difficult to play on the piano and it is a comfortable key to sing in.

xxx

I like D minor too... "the saddest of all keys"
As for keys I don't like to hear... C major does sound very... simple, you know? As if the person who wrote the piece couldn't be bothered to put it in anything trickier.

I don't mind any key. When you're playing things Ab Maj/E Maj plus, just remember which notes are not flattened/sharpened as compared to those that are. That's how I tackled my first piece in B (A Thousand Miles).

My favourite scales are all those starting on D. D major was the first one I ever learnt (not c on flute because the C1 can be hard to play for begginers, and now I can zip through the minors and chromatics and the dom in G about twice the speed required for Grade 8 (slight exaggeration~sorry) Don't you just love scales like that!!

Ma fave key has to be Db major, i always enjoy the sound from Db major and this drives myself to get every note right so i don't spoil the sound!