 Hi guys, this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this lesson, we are going to figure out a few tips or a few concerns or strategies to figure out the scale of a song or the key of a song if you are a vocalist or a pianist. So it doesn't only work if you play the piano, it's also if you are a singer and you are trying to decide what fits your voice, what fits your range, so on and so forth. So it's for both singing and piano. So stay tuned till the end, there will be quite a few tips, one or two tips may end up being non-technical, it may be a bit more psychological, so that I'll leave for the end but the technical stuff is what we'll start off with and also when you communicate between each other sometimes the problem is in the communication. So let's try and address all possible issues when it comes to choosing a scale for a song. Before we get started, it will be awesome if you could consider hitting the subscribe button to our channel if you are regular or if you are a new viewer, do consider watching along and if you like the lesson, hit the subscribe and turn on the bell icon for regular notifications. You will be informed whenever a new video hits your way, we release content very often. So let's get cracking. The first thing is to understand the difference between a scale and a key. A lot of people say this is out of my scale or this is out of my range, you know, so first of all we need to understand the difference. A scale has a root, a root can be one of the 12 notes in music that's C, C sharp also known as D flat, D, E flat, E, F, F sharp also known as G flat, G, A flat, A, D flat, B, so that's a total of 12 roots. So a scale will have a root and then based on that root, let's take for simplicity A being my root, the intervallic relationship between a seven note structure and the root will be the scale. So most scales will have either a major third interval or a minor third interval. So if you take A, that's its major third C sharp, that's its minor third C. You could also, a lot of scales end up having the perfect fourth and the perfect fifth in them. A, D, perfect fourth, A, E, perfect fifth, so these are the regular intervals. So based on whether you want the scale to be happy or sad, you could have a major third or a minor third based on whether you want the scale to be normal or abnormal I guess or exotic if that could be a word we could use. The four could be a normal perfect four or a sharp four or a tritone, so that creates a more dreamy, a more unclear, a more I guess a more exotic scale and another thing which makes a scale sound different or abnormal if you take a major second, you flat that you get a minor second. So if you combine the minor second with a sharp four, you get a very exotic flavor, a very rare sounding scale. So things like that is what makes up a scale. Yes, you have the interval of the sixth and the seventh as well, so the sixth could be a major sixth or a minor sixth, the seventh could be a major seventh or a minor seventh. So that's what tends to constitute a scale. Now your music will sound pretty much the same whether your root is anything, any of the twelve as long as the scale remains, your music will pretty much be the same. So for example, if I take a song like this, twinkle, twinkle, little star, now that is on the key of A, A major. So you see how I use the word key, the key is the name of the root from which the scale is. So the scale's root, you could be the key or the key center. You could also use the word key center or the sa in Indian music or the tonic or the tonal center. There are a lot of words really to explain the key. So you also have a key signature in music. So I would suggest watch my video where I talk about scale versus key versus ragas versus key signatures in a very detailed way with notation and all the other explanations. So we'll leave that link in the description. So you could choose any of the twelve roots and coming back to my example, if I played twinkle, twinkle, little star, if I get them the intervals 1, 1, 5, 5, 6, 6, 5, 4, 4, 3, 3, 2, 2, 1, I could then write that down on other scales. So let's say I wanted to play twinkle, twinkle or sing twinkle, twinkle on D flat. For some reason D flat seems to suit my voice really well. Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are. So now it's easy for me to sing it, but for you to execute it on the keyboard or any instrument, you need to figure out the interval relationships. So write down the original song on A perhaps, A, A, E, E, F sharp, F sharp, E and then you need to figure out the interval relationship between the notes. That's 1, 1, 5, 5, 6, 6, 5 and then what is 1, 1, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 5 on the D flat scale. 1, 1, 5, 5, 6, 6, 5, that's D flat, D flat, A flat, A flat, B flat, B flat, A flat. You can continue. G flat, G flat, F, F, E flat, E flat, D flat, you're composing it in a different scale. Now how do you choose this scale? Is it based on convenience or something else? I would always like to believe that it's something else, it's not convenience because the convenience boils down to you the human being playing the music. It doesn't affect the listener or the audience or your other fellow bandmates or maybe you're playing with a choir. It's about what serves them best because like I said earlier the song Twinkle Twinkle will sound pretty much the same whichever key you play it on because the scale is still major. If I change the scale, now the emotion, the song itself has a different vibe. The song completely changes. Now that's not our intention. When a song is given to us, if it's a cover or we're doing a rendition of a song, the scale is pretty much going to remain major. That's why I get a bit confused sometimes when singers say this is not my scale. Well that's a wrong terminology because it's like saying I don't ever want to sing on major which is ridiculous because most songs are on major. So a major scale is one of the many commonly used scales in music. The singer should probably say I don't think that key works for me for this song. I don't think they ever will say something like that. A lot of training is needed for these singers but over this video I'm going to tell you how you can tackle the problem. If you yourself are a singer or if you're working with singers or a huge group of musicians, a band, a choir or an orchestra, how do we actually choose the key for the scale? Considering that the scale is pretty much fixed but the key needs to serve everyone. It has to make sure that no one in your group is annoyed when you're playing that song. And the challenge arises when you're doing a cover of an existing song. Let's say you do a cover of a Beatles song or a Nora Jones song wherein Dave already chose in the scale. If you observe Nora Jones tends to prefer E flat, Elton John tends to prefer F. The Beatles do on every scale. So with Beatles you have no choice. You have to pretty much know all 12 keys. Michael Jackson poses a weird problem because some of his songs, a lot of his songs, I guess in that radio era of not wanting to rip off the artist's songs, maybe the copyright laws were not so much in place, they actually detuned the song ever so slightly. So it would be a few sense abnormal, which is why learning a song like Beat It or Billy Jean will actually be very tricky. So there are a lot of technical challenges as well. So let's address all of this one by one. First of all, you need to ask yourself as a singer. Is the melody you're singing, is the choice of the key and the key basically? Is it your specific preference or is it based on other influences like the guitar player or the horn player? Now why I say guitar and horns, the guitar is tuned with open strings. It's basically E A D G B and the high E actually much lower E A D G B E. So whenever you're on this open string kind of system, it's very easy to play open chords. You don't have to bar the hand and that's very difficult, at least for me, because I'm not a professional guitar player. So it's very tough for me to play those huge bar shapes like F sharp or B minor and things like that. So guitar players will automatically prefer songs which suit their bandwidth, which is not wanting to do too much of power chord work. These are normal level guitar players. I'm not talking about the pros or the advanced players. Guitar players would prefer keys like G D A sometimes E is also a common scale. And if you're on a minor, then you prefer E and A. You may not prefer G minor. You prefer G major instead of G minor. So you need to see what the other players prefer, especially if you're a piano player or a vocalist. A pianist essentially is what you see is what you get kind of an instrument. So what I truly believe is if you're good enough to play a song on A major, you should be good enough to play a song on another major, be it E flat. It just requires you to practice on that scale. So every scale needs to be practiced unlike a guitar player. Because a guitar player may prefer a specific key. However, a guitar player could also use a capo, which is a tool which kind of changes the actual pitch or the key. But you retain your shape. You think that you're on the same key and scale as a guitar player. So you have that same easy shape. So you may want to keep all this in mind when you're collaborating or working with other musicians. See what scale is comfortable or key is comfortable for them first before you decide about what suits you best. And what makes their parts sound better, especially for horns, for flute, a lot of flutes, bamboo flutes in India especially, will sound good on only certain keys. So you have to work with that flottist and come up with something. Horn players like trumpets and saxophone and trombones and the like enjoy playing flat scales. For some reason B-flat major, E-flat major in the other side of the circle of fifths, those scales seem to work for a lot of horn players. Now if you're a singer tackling this situation, I understand that your scale or your key matters a lot but keep in mind the logistics. Keep in mind what the others are potentially able to do. And we need to find solutions there. So that's important. The next point as a singer, this is more with respect to vocals, range. If you say this song is not in my range, you may be true but then is, are you saying that because you seem to have a general vocal range or is it specific to the song and the prominent intervals that you might encounter. For example, if I have to play Happy Birthday in D major, that's the highest note for me in D major. So in the D major scale, when I sing Happy Birthday, it is potentially a bit tricky for me. But I can sing many other songs on the key of D major. I can do Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, I can probably do a lot of other songs because maybe they will not encounter those, that high note, that octave jump which Happy Birthday seems to have. Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday, it's at least tough for me. So I would suggest find the tricky note in the song, make a note of that and see where that tricky note should go to. So I would freeze the problem to Happy Birthday, very tough for me to sing. So I'm on D, so let's try and do C major. Happy Birthday, still a bit tricky, I'll be a bit scared doing that. Let's try B. Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday, sounds good but maybe think of B flat perhaps which is a semitone down. I'm just moving semitones down pretty much. Let's try B flat, Happy Birthday, that kind of works for me. So this decision making process requires you as a vocalist to at least acknowledge the fact that there are 12 keys in music. You can't just say I prefer D, it's my scale and Hindustani singers and even karnatic singers tend to have this problem a lot because they jam on a tanpura and the tanpura will give you a specific fixed note and sometimes the teachers will say you know that's your scale, you have to just go by that. It's not true if you are in the real world with a variety of genres, pop, blues, rock and jazz and what not. So if you saw this Happy Birthday example, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, I can sing all the happy birthday, I can't sing that so I have to do B flat instead isn't it. Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, da da da da da da da da da da da da da So B flat might be my scale. You can always experiment and try different options you know. So the question should, you should not go into a song and say it has to be on that scale or that key. It's absolutely ridiculous because the song will have different intervals in comparison with that other song which you just learned and then the next song will have different intervals. So you are always needing to take a call when you do this specific to that song or that part of that song and you can't do the verse on some scale and then say hey I'll transpose the song in the chorus. That's not possible because the song is already given to you. So you need to find the scale which works for you. So in conclusion, the vocal range you choose is always with respect to the song, not with respect to you. Moving forward. So now that you've come to terms with the fact that you cannot really play the song on the existing scale, you prefer another scale. How do you handle the logistics? So if you're a piano player now, now coming to the piano, let's say you're a singer who also plays the piano or a pianist who sings or you're trying to sing in order to work later on with your band. So if you sing and play the piano, the question now is should you transpose the piano to the key of the song or should you transpose the song itself? This is for learning purposes. So you are now trying to learn a song. The song's playing on Spotify or wherever and well what do you do? So the ideal scenario here is you need to transpose the song. You don't want to transpose your keyboard. Because of that annoying transpose button which I keep complaining about throughout my YouTube lessons, because the annoying transpose button, what it will do is it will first of all make you a very lazy piano player. It will force you or just motivate you to just play everything on, let's say the C scale or the white notes. And there is no factual explanation to prove that white note scales are difficult or easier than black note scale. There's nothing which proves that. It's just a horrible system which is printed in books. It's easy to notate and so on. So don't use the transpose button, especially if you want to also improve your ears while going forward as a musician. Over time, you will know the sound of G, you will know the sound of E flat. So then you're gonna mess with your sense organs if you use this transpose button as a kind of a crutch at the very beginning of your journey of learning songs. So the first thing you want to probably ensure now is don't use the transpose button ever. So what I will do is I'll learn the song on the scale, on the target scale which I have to learn it on. Now the problem is how do I work it out? How do I learn it? You have to find a way to transpose the song. The transposition of a song is not possible on YouTube. It's not possible on Spotify. You may, if you're a geeky, a tech person, you may want to import it into a DAW, pitch correct it, fine tune it and so on and so forth. But an easy tool, which is a free tool out there, is called Moises. It's an AI tool as we call it. And what you can do is you can import the entire song, which is downloaded of course, and then change not just the speed of the song, which YouTube can do. You can also change the key of the song, the entire key can be adjusted and it'll tell you what key is the correct key. You could then, if you're not so good with theory, you can share the knowledge of what's comfortable for you with your respective musicians. And if you're a piano player and you're learning a song on A major, let's say, and you just feel it's too tricky for your voice, transpose it down to G and here's what's cool, you can mute the vocalist. So it also becomes a karaoke track. You can mute the vocals and you can sing over that backing track. And if there is already existing piano, well, mute the piano. So you can kind of have a nice scenario as a piano singer or a guitar singer, dump it into this app. There are a few apps out there actually, it's not just Moises, there are a few more, most of them are free actually. So mute your vocalist of that original song because they might sound like a chipmunk or something if you do it higher. It'll sound very annoying. So mute them and maybe reduce, control the levels and that's about it. So this is a great way to kind of practice along with the song. Otherwise, if you don't feel you need practice and if you don't feel that you need to practice with the original song, your bandmates itself are there. You can skip this whole Moises step. But the Moises or the scale figuring out step is very important, whether you do it with an app or otherwise. So we figured out all the theoretical and the technical stuff. Let's try and figure out a few psychological things which over my experience working with a lot of singers as a producer, as an arranger, as a songwriter and so on and so forth. And even as a gigging musicians understanding the rigors of playing live concerts and doing tours for end to end. Over a month you do about 15 shows. How do you handle a singer or if you are one of those people? It's very important when you choose a scale of a song to push yourself beyond your comfort zone as a singer, especially when you're doing rock, pop, even ballads, any song. Because at the end of the day, we are in an entertainment industry. Your audience deep down wants you to be vulnerable. You need to kind of show them that you're willing to fail. You don't want to give them a safe robotic performance. They will feel that. They may not know that, but they will feel that you're not putting in that energy and that effort. And the energy really comes from lead instruments and the vocals is at the forefront. So when you're choosing a scale, don't keep trying to say, hey, I want an easy scale. Not really. If you do get an easy scale, your audience is going to psychologically figure out that this guy has not worked on his song. You know, you've not chosen the right thing or you've not put in enough effort. People will feel that. So find the scale which is just outside your comfort zone and then practice. Practice hard to kind of make that higher above comfort comfortable when you go on stage or when you're in a recording. So I would probably argue that any of these great singers who end up singing and holding on to these really long, high notes and you think, how on earth is that possible? You know, those are the things which will make you want to make reels and share it with your friends and so on, you know, on WhatsApp and whatnot. But come to think of it, maybe in those singers' minds, for them that note is actually an easy note. And you don't know that. You feel that it's really tricky. So being vulnerable is very important when you choose the scale and also are you warmed up to begin with? Maybe you shouldn't have chosen the scale early morning when you haven't done your routines, your practice routine. So that is very important as a vocalist to keep in mind, right? And something which will hopefully motivate you as a pianist to learn songs on multiple keys would be to just look at the ecosystem. The piano has 12 notes. It's what you see is what you get instrument. So if you play something on C major all your life, it's going to always feel the same. So that sort of gives me the idea that I'm playing, let's say a sport, let's say cricket or tennis, in the same climatic condition, which is that same old playground where you'll probably always win. But as you know, how tennis works is you have different surfaces over the different grand slams, clay, grass, hard coats and so on and so forth. And it's the same with a lot of sports. If you look at it, let's say cricket, you have a ground where it spins more, a dryer pitch or a ground where it swings more with more grass on it or bounces more and so on the soil matters. So many things matter when it comes to a playground to play a sport, right? But on the piano, we don't realize or we sometimes forget that each scale is a different playground. So if you excel on all 12 scales, it's going to feel a lot good. You're going to be a much more professional player. You can work with a lot more individuals. And more importantly, every scale, because it's a different playground, you're going to play your sport differently. It's going to feel very different. So I might want to use F major to play some blues music. I like blues a lot on F. I might use E flat to play some good old country stuff. I might use E to play folk music. So for me, I start having preferences. If I'm playing ballads, I just love F sharp. Reggae, I don't know, maybe F sharp, minor, I think that works. Even A major kind of works for reggae. Now, that's my preference, not as a singer, but just because of my years of playing multiple songs. And maybe it's what those artists also have preferred from whom I've learned those songs. So keep in mind that the piano has 12 keys. Every key feels different. Each key, as I say, is a different playground. So observe, be part of those different playgrounds. Who doesn't want to travel to different playgrounds and play the sport? So we've covered the technical aspects of choosing a key as a singer and pianist. We've covered some of the psychological aspects, some of the technological aspects as well, how you can use technology using apps and so on. Now, lastly, I want to cap off the video by talking about how you can be a bit more professional when you're dealing with others in this exercise of choosing a key and a scale. First of all, decide in advance. Decide well in advance, especially if you're a singer. Now, I get very annoyed with vocalists from time to time where it's a show, maybe we're doing a tribute gig, we're doing a tribute to the Beatles or something. Now, you know how tough Beatles songs can get. So each of those songs have specific piano licks, specific phrases, remember what I said earlier. Piano is a, each key is a unique playground. So I've invested that entire time and then the singer gets back to us on the band chat group and says, can I do it a step down? So the singer in that environment assumes that it's possible. It's easy. Hey, the piano player just has to hit minus two. The guitar player can use a capo. It's not as easy as that because for most of us who play often, we prefer to learn the song in the scale with which we are performing on stage. At least that is my preference because my pitching starts getting more discrete, so to speak. So be a bit, you know, decide in advance, communicate and say, hey, these are the two scales I'm considering, maybe A-flat and G. They're different from the original. If you don't know the scale, just say it's two steps up from the original. Let's learn this and come prepared for our next rehearsal. So decide in advance, understand each other's challenges. Like I told you earlier, a guitar player prefers these open sounding songs. A piano player, well, we should not have a preference. You should be able to play on all 12 scales. A horn player will prefer the flat scales and so on and so forth. And also work with the right technology. Work with the right ecosystem and don't commit. The main thing is when you're working with people, never commit until it's very clear. Put it out there and say, we are doing the song on a major scale. Maybe prepare an Excel sheet saying, telling the key and also if the key is major or minor, because otherwise people may think, if you say I'm in the key of A and if you thought it's A major, but I thought it's F sharp minor, which is the relative minor, then you need to write A major or else A minor. So if you had written A minor, I will know that your root is A. If it's A major, I'll know your root is A. But if you say I'm in the scale of A, it becomes a bit misleading because I might think that the root is F sharp and so on and so forth. So keep all these things in mind and hopefully you'll be a better communicator and you'll look at the piano in a more open way, in a more playground like way and you'll be a much more professional singer and your emotions will carry forward in the best way possible to your audience. That's the main thing I would want from you as a singer watching this video. You need to be vulnerable. At the same time, you need to be comfortable. So you need to find that sweet spot, choose the scale and go for it. So hope you found the lesson useful. Thanks for watching the video. Cheers.