| Before I get into this, you might want to read up on musical frequencies first, here: As I have a theory - well half of one anyway - and one that might be complete nonsense, but it's one that I like to talk about anyway. If someone asks you who your favourite bands are, or what your favourite music is - you can probably rattle of a list of artists, and genres, or maybe the odd tune or three that you like. I do the same, and predominantly I like all things that are electronic, poppy, feature the piano, have a chilled out/ambient vibe, or maybe sometimes even a little bit club/techno/dancey. But have you ever wondered, WHY you like a particular song. Especially if it's not something that you think you would usually like...? One day a few years back, I heard a new song (when it was first released) that I really liked. I wasn't even aware of becoming to like it, I guess it just came up on the radio a lot, I'd tap my fingers along to it whilst driving, and slowly over the period of a couple of weeks just started to like it more and more, to the point where I was thinking "Hey, I REALLY like this song", and felt perhaps that there might be a reason why, but I didn't know what the reason was. David Gray - Babylon I should point out at this early stage that I don't do lyrics in songs - usually. Take any of my favourite songs, and they could well be singing "The green fish eat tea on thursday, would you like to play with my wheelbarrow and butter my scones", or similar, and I'd bet I'd still really like it. I tend to like songs more for the overall sounds, that nice piano bit in the middle, or that chord halfway through that makes the hairs on the back of your neck standby. So - Babylon, was a hit during 2000 and was a very radio-friendly song - which is another way of putting that certains stations (like, Virgin) played it to death relentlessly for about six months, during which time the follow up David Gray single has been released, had been a hit, and had gone again, and yet they were still playing "Babylon". And during all that time ... all those plays, the times i was playing it from my own CD that i'd bought, or music system i didn't get bored of it - ever. Not once. Not at all.I can play all these years later and it still sounds good. I still tap along, I still the the wrong words on the chorus "Let go with your heart", and everything, and it was after about three months that I thought that that must be a reason maybe that I liked this song. It was also about this time that I'd been taken piano lessons, and was getting into music in a much more technical way and understanding that songs were based around a certain 'key' - a certain frequency, which gets used a lot in a song. Once I'd become competent enough on the keyboard, I'd have it plugged up to my mixer at home, and I'd quite often try and play along with songs that were in my collection, or song that were on the radio. And so one day - about that 3 months after Babylon had first been a hit, it came on the radio at home, I started playing along, and within a few seconds worked out that it was all in the key of E-Flat Major.
And so then .. then I thought "hang on..." if I like that song because it's in E-Flat, then maybe some of my other favourite songs are also in E-Flat. Or if they're not .. what key are they in? And thus embarked a mission of me sitting down, and going through a lot of my music collection to see what key there were in. Having iTunes installed on my computer now makes this easy. I can easily pull up a smart playlist to show my favourite (5 star) songs, and also I pulled up my Top 200 most played songs. I decided that I would use the 'comments' field to record what key a song was in. Now this was partly tricky, because some songs are in multiple keys, either a single key-change (usually about two thirds through) or maybe one that changed for the chorus and changed back to the starting key for the verse. But I went through them anyway, I went through them ALL ... and in fact to this day, whenever I add a new favourite song of mine, I also sit down and work out what key it's in, and slowly I build up a list.
So I went through all my songs that i really liked, and a lot of songs that i liked not so much, and made a note of what key they were in. And here was a thing ... a LOT of my favourite songs, and some odd ones which I liked but never really was sure why I liked them started popping up in the key of E flat. Was that it? Was that why I liked them?
The frequency of E flat major in the middle of the keyboard is 622.25 Khz. Check out this page here for piano keys and their frequencies - note that here, E Flat (Eb) is referred to as D Sharp (D#).
To summarise.. in the same way that someone might say to you "What's your favourite colour?", you might say "Blue, but I don't like Red". Without going into why you like one colour than an another - all I'm saying is that you could take that principal and move it to be musical frequencies instead. You like certain songs more because they contain frequencies which you like more than others. And so onto the list of other songs that I'd liked .. and since discovered that they're all based around E Flat, and adds evidence to my theory that I've got a 'thing' about songs in E Flat. iTunes again backs me up here ... [add graph] Crowded House - Don't dream it's over / Fall at your feet Now I'd liked Crowded House for a long time, but the two stand out songs for me had always been Don't Dream It's Over and Fall at your Feet. Again, I'd always thought that Fall at your feet wasn't a GREAT song, but there was something about it that I quite liked. So when I realised that there might be an 'E Flat' element to it all, I went back and checked all the Crowded House songs to see which key there were in. In fact, I don't think I even had to play along to work it out - I borrowed the music score book to 'Recurring Dream' (the best of crowded house) and just flipped through looking at all the key singatures, and sure enough - my two favourite CH songs 'Dream' and 'Feet' both had the tell-tale three b's in the signature bar.
So when I realised that there might be an 'E Flat' element to it all, I went back and checked all the Crowded House songs to see which key there were in. In fact, I don't think I even had to play along to work it out - I borrowed the music score book to 'Recurring Dream' (the best of crowded house) and just flipped through looking at all the key singatures, and sure enough - my two favourite CH songs 'Dream' and 'Feet' both had the tell-tale three b's in the signature bar.
For reasons that I really haven't got time and space to go into here (this page is long enough already), many years ago back in the early 1990's I ended up listening to a lot of my BBC local radio station - Radio Surrey. BBC Local Radio is usually geared towards people in their 40's and over, and here was me - a young youthful lad in his 20's listening to it, when really I should have been tuned into something far more contemporary. Anyway, one morning they were doing theatre reviews and round-ups, and as part of 'A little night music' they played this track - Send in the Clowns. And I remember the hairs on the back of my neck standing up as something ... something ... inside of me really connected with it, and really liked it, and yet I wasn't sure what. Years later of course - I came back round to playing it and discovered that it was of course in E Flat, the only reason I can put it down to being why I really like this. Georgio Moroder & Phil Oakey - Together in Electric Dreams This has been a bit of a university/college favourite for me and a whole bunch of people that I hung about, to the point where it became a little bit anthemic, and respresented a whole bunch of good times that we've had together. So much so that when it come to
To explain the story behind this one is going to sound a little sad, and is probably the one that I will be most embarrassed about admitting. But fuck it .. in for a penny, in for a pound and if you've got this far down the page reading this then I figure that you're doing it because you believe or agree with me in what I'm writing, and not just because you want the chance to take the piss out of me at a later date. In early 2001, the very first of the 'Reality' choose-a-popstar programmes appeared on TV. And, it was called just "Popstars". What can I say? I really like it. It was the programme that produced the winners "Hear'say" (remember them?) and the losers went on to form the band Liberty X - still going strong to this day in fact (or at least at the time of writing in 2005 anyway). Well I really liked the show. Got caught up and involved in it. It was fun. It was good. It was also bad. But it had it's emotional roller coaster moments for the people in it that you got wrapped in. During the show, they used the song 'Bridge over troubled water' on the contestants taking part to test out their vocal abilities, and so you got to hear the song quite a lot.
My Orchestral Manouevers in the Dark obsession came about during the spring and summer of 1991, when "Sailing on the Seven Seas" was a big hit. I really liked that, and got into it, and off the back of it ended up borrowing the 'Best of...' album off of a friend of mine. 'Maid of Orleans' was an immediate stand out track. It just made me sit up and listen and grabbed my attention ... and again, I felt as if there was something deep and alluring to it somewhere down buried inside the song. I never knew what it was of course, I just knew that I really like the song - so much so that I even bought it on 12" vinyl when I saw it in an old record sale once - pointless when I alread owned a copy of it on CD. And yes ... I discovered much later, that it's in E flat.
I really shouldn't take the piss out of my old school friend Peter, because he is a lovely guy and he means well, but sometimes - maybe more often than sometimes - he comes out with some funny lines which just makes me think that he's not at all "in touch" with society or anything that's going on. He doesn't have a TV ... or at least he didn't for years and years, as he enjoyed other past times such as knitting - and his only admission to the popular media was to listen to the radio - but even then was was more of your Radio 4 listener than your Radio 1 listener. Which is why I was pleased & suprised when one day I was visiting him and spied in his CD collection (smaller than mine, natch) the rare Roxette album "Tourism". Now I'd liked all the early cheesy pop/rock stuff that Per and Marie had produced but when they'd brought out this album I hadn't bought it as it wasn't a proper studio album. Ok, it had some studio recorded tracks on it, but it also had a lot of live stuff on it, and rough demos that aren't too polished - and quite frankly it didn't seem like a 'real' enough album for me to go out and buy it. (Later, when I did get round to buying it, I think I only ever put 3 out of the 15 tracks on it into iTunes which goes to show just what I thought of the album). "Oh you've Tourism" I say to Peter. "Is it any good?". "It's okay", he says ... "My favourite track on it is Silver Blue". Now for Peter to make a recommendation was quite suprising. I mean - I was quite suprised that he'd even bought the album in the first place. I shouldn't take the piss (like I said), but when "Oooh ah, just a little bit" was number one for weeks and weeks back in 1996 and getting airplay all over the place, Peter turned to me (shortly after I said "Oh no, not Gina-Fucking-G again), "Who's GIna G?". I don't know why I always remember this - but I do, much in the same way that at the height if it's popularity, we were watching an epsiode of the Simpsons which did a Jerry Springer take off/spoof, and Peter had to ask "Who's Jerry Springer?" But I digress. We whack the CD on, and i do my irritating habit of making an instant decision in the first 10 seconds of whether I'm going to like a song or not (often before the vocal has even started), but when I get so 'Silver Blue' I keep it on, at Peter's recommendation. And it's good, I like it. I like it so much that I play it again, and then ask if I can make a copy of the CD. The rest of the weekend passes and I forget ... forget all about it, until a few months later I see the album in a bargain bin section in a record shop and I snap it up for £6. I know as I buy it that really I've only got it for that one track and I'm wondering whether it's worth spending six quid on. But why do I like it? I don't know, but all those months on there was something in me that felt that i just liked it a lot and I needed to hear it again.l Silve Blue isn't one of those songs that I realised at the time was in E-flat, but when I went through top Top 100 "most played" tracks on my iPod and worked out what key they were all in, SIlver BLue was in there, and then I discovered the key (sic.) to maybe why I liked it so much all this time without realising. Anyway Peter - if you're reading this, thanks, but remind me never to enter a pub pop-quiz team with you.
So I've bought the new Erasure album. Excuse the fact that ten years after they were popular I'm still buying Erasure released like a sad commited fan - I've bought it and I'm playing it. I stick it on my CD player (not iTunes, don't know why - just the way I felt that day) although I have got my computer on doing stuff, and i'm half listening to it, half ignoring it just on in the background sub-copncieously taking it in, y'know? It end. I hit 'Play' again, and a little less than an hour later it ends again and I'm still not done so I play it from the start again. This time - during the third play through, something odd happens. It's towards the end of track 9 - "I broke it all in two", when suddenly something seems to 'click' inside my head and I think "I quite like this one". Third play through and I'm developing favourite tracks. That in itself is not unusual - it's how you get to know music and like certain songs isn't it? So i play it, it ends, I play it again, and I end up probably playing it through about fives times continually. And that's when something else triggers inside my mind. Shit! What key is it in?! Nooo ... surely it can't be, can it? no no .. that would be too weird. Again. It takes me about 30 seconds to find out. I hit "skip back" once more to track 9, and it starts up, I fire up my keyboard, and attempt to play along, and - Bingo. E Flat. again. Fucking again. I have a little spaz-out moment (I don't actually know how to define a "spaz-out moment" or what that really means, but it just sounds like a good phrase, so go with me on that one, okay?) when I realise what had happened. Sub-conciously I felt like I had picked up on and picked out the only track on the album that was in E-Flat. And to this day, it's the only track off the album which stays in my iTunes - all the rest are a bit rubbish. But this one? E Flat? It's a winner.
How did I discover this was in E flat? Like this: I was out in a friends car ... I remember it quiet clearly, and we were driving to Kingston for the friends birthday to go bowling and have a few drinks. The Maroon 5 album has not been out long, and my friends were raving about it and I was doing usual "not getting excited about an album which everyone else is raving about" sort of thing. To me - the more something is hyped, the less I tend to take an interest in it. 'She will be loved' came on. Until then, every song had been a bit of a blur, much of a muchness, and I hadn't really been paying attention or really enjoying it. Two thirds of the way through the song, it did the bit where it stops, pauses, and starts again. And at that point I turned to my mate driving and said "What's this one then? I quite like this one", and he tells me the name of the track. Over the next week, I then hear it on the radio, my girlfriend buys the CD, and before I know it I've got it on my computer too. There's just something about it, something I can't put my finger on why I like it. Why do I like it? Ah!! No. No! Really? Can it be? Shit! Is it? Indeed ... the moment suddenly hits me as think "Surely... surely it can't be in E Flat can it? That would be too weird". I get my keyboard out. I play along. Yes it is. And that to me explains why it stood out for me so much. Brian MacFadden - Real to me Brian MacFadden was one fifth of that terribly cheesy-pop-boy-band westlife. On the plus side though, he had a few years of dating and marriage with Karry Katonia, blessed with one of the largest sets of breasts that I have even seen. Result - nice one Brian. Point is - even for someone like me who likes cheesy pop music, there is no way on earth I would ever like a Westlife tune - like - ever. So I was rather disconcerted when getting ready one moring having just got out of the shower and the bathroom radio was playing that I heard this song and realised that it was about the third time I'd heard it over the last couple of days and that I was starting to hum it, and starting to really enjoy it. I found out who it was - got over the fact it was by an ex-westlife member - and played it lots to the point where I thought I'd better figure out what key it was in, to discover that I could add it to my list of E-flat faves. Embrace - Gravity
This just about finished me off. The new Coldplay album (X&Y) has been out for a while now, and there's all the traditional hype that comes with a major artists releasing a new album, and - like I always do - I fail to fall for the hype, and I did not buy the album. I did though go onto iTunes and download a few tracks which took my fancy - and 'Fix you" was NOT one of them. Fast forward a few weeks, and one morning I'm driving into work on an early shift. I have to be in for 7am, thus leave at 6am and my normal breakfast show of choice (Chris Moyles on Radio 1) is not on yet, because they don't start 'til 7am. instead I find myself listening to Johnny Vaughan no Capital Radio which is a bit cheesey but I quite like it. So iIm driving in, the sun is still rising, and they play "Fix you". I don't really pick on it at first. Not until the guitar kicks in halfway through, and it coincides nicely as I approach Hammersmith bridge, and then across the bridge, and I look to my site and the sun is glistening off of the Thames and onto my face, and suddenly out of nowhere it's a really beautiful moment that I didn't see comnig. it's so so good. I'm not (as always) paying attention to the song that much - especially not the lyrics, but it just sounds good and seems quite fitting to the mood that I'm in. Vaughan even comes out the back of the song saying "Is that too depressnig to play in the morning? Text in and let us know what you think" - and on an impulse I fnid myself doing just that, echoing how beautiful I think it is. I go to work, I forget about it, I don't hear the song for three days until Sunday when Virgin play out whilst I'm out driving in my car. Oh. Now I like it. Now I really like it. There's something about it- I don't know what it is, but I have to play it. You might find this hard to believe but at this point it hasn't occured to me to check what key it's in. Not even when I download it from iTunes and play it for two hours looped repeatedly really getting into it! Oh no, it's not until the next day on the Monday when I'm playing it again for about the 10th time that day that then suddently something clicks in my head that says "Er... Geoff, you do realise that you havent' checked what key it's in yet have you. You don't suppose .. ", and all that's happening in my mind. So I start talking back to myself OUT LOUD! "no no no, it can't be! can it? surely it can't be! no?" already swinging my keyboard onto my lap, but humming the tune as I do so, and something in my brain sort of says "I think it is you know". I play along to the opening bars. It takes about 3 seconds for me to realise. "Nooo!" i shout out loud "No fucking way, no, not again, what is it! Why is it? Why does this keep happening?". And then merrily play along (disjointedly) in bliss for the next 5 minutes. It's a beautiful song. Pet Shop Boys - I made my excuses and left Ok, so you think that by now I'd be getting really good at spotting songs in Eb, right? Wrong ... as this example shows. In May 2006 I moved from England to the USA, and in the process was unable to take my keyboard with me - leaving me with big gaping gap in my ability to play along with songs and work out which key they were in. In June of 2006, the new Pet Shop Boys album 'Fundamental' was released, and I quite quickly had three favourite tracks on the album - 'Numb', 'Luna Park', and 'I made my excuses and left' - the later in particular I liked so much, I gave it a five-star rating in iTunes. And (unbelieveably) not at any point did I think - "Ooh, I wonder what key it's in". Until that is six months later, I get a new keyboard as a Christmas present, and I get it home and plug it in and I think "Great, now I can go through some of my favourite song from the last few months and see what key there in", and what do you know .. 'Excuses' is in E flat major, and suddenly it all makes sense as to why it stood out for me as a track on the album and why I really liked it.
Arabic scale, african scale, european scale. Middle A to me is 440Hz, but is not always the case ...
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in
fact, I've got smart playlists in iTunes now of five keys that a lot of
my songs are in. A flat major, B flat major,
E flat major , F major and G
major . And it's quite a cool thing to do - set iTunes with a
healthy crossfade (5 seconds or so), and play them through - as you do,
you notice that the tunes tend to seemlessly 'blend' into one another
because they're all in the same key, it sounds most fluent.
To
backup my theory a little more, I found that there were a lot of songs
that I had that I liked that were in the key of B Flat (Bb, 466.16Khz).
The key of B Flat features a lot of the same notes (and thus frequencies)
that E Flat does.
Depeche
Mode - Enjoy the silence
A
little night music - Send in the clowns
Simon
& Garfunkel - Bridge over troubled water
OMD
- Maid of Orleans
Roxette
- Silver Blue
Erasure
- Broke it all in two
Maroon
5 - She will be loved 
Coldplay
- Fix you
