In this lesson, you’ll learn two easy ways to figure out the key of a piece of music. In the first example, we’ll start with a chord chart and use the natural pattern of chords in a key to figure out which key we are playing in. In the second example, we’ll use our major scale to find the key of a piece of music while listening to the track.
These aren’t just ‘hacks’. You’re going to learn how to use a couple of bits of music theory that you can build on in the future. But today, these tricks are going to help you start having more fun on the guitar immediately!
These tricks aren’t magic. Sometimes, you will come across a chord progression that uses advanced harmony and doesn’t behave according to these rules. However, the strategies you’ll learn in this lesson will work 80% of the time.
How to figure out the key of a song by looking at the chord chart
It’s frustrating when you’re looking at a chord chart and have no idea how to figure out the key of the song. Maybe it doesn’t tell you the key at the top of the chart. Or, maybe it does, but something isn’t quite sounding right and you think whoever wrote the chart might have made a mistake.
Unfortunately, this happens more than you’d think. The problem with a lot of the chord chart websites is that they are full of user-generated content. These users don’t necessarily have a great understanding of music theory. Even the most highly-rated chord chart can have mistakes. Being able to look at the chord chart yourself and easily figure out the key will help you see through these errors and enjoy the process of learning the song.
Check out this blog post for an in-depth look at ‘How to easily figure out the key of a song’.
Here’s the TL;DR:
Identify two major chords that would be next to each other if you lined the chords of the song up alphabetically. These will be the IV and V chords.
Count back through the chords in the key to figure out the I chord.
Once you have the I chord, find an instance of it in the progression.
Once you have found the primary chords (I, IV and V), check through the rest of the chords in the progression to make sure they fit with the chords you expect to see on each scale degree.
