"D minor: Melancholy womanliness, the spleen and humours brood."
-Christian Schubart, 1778
"It's part of a trilogy, really-- a musical trilogy that I'm doing in d minor, which I find is the saddest of all keys. I don't know why, but it makes people weep instantly."
-Nigel Tufnel playing "Lick My Love Pump" in This is Spinal Tap[1], 1984
Also...
"C major: Completely pure. Its character is: innocence, simplicity, naïvety, children’s talk."
... will persist as long as C major consists of a) the white keys on the instrument of the piano and b) the key in modern notation that doesn't require any sharps or flats in its key signature.
1: FYI-- Christopher Guest appears to actually be playing in d minor for that moment in the movie.
I still however feel drawn to certain frequencies even without reference or other instrument playing and those frequencies I am drawn to are actual notes. I know 440 Hz is somewhat arbitrary sure, but 99% of the music we hear is somewhat referenced to it.
To me there is certainly a difference between playing a song with an fundamental A 440 Hz or an fundamental A# 466.16 Hz. Not even just when playing them next to each other, but also when you play them days apart. It happened more than once to me that some instrument had been detuned a semitone up or down and I noticed because the resulting music felt different. All of that of course playing solo with no reference to compare to.
Let's not forget, that our brain is not neutral towards frequencies. We can hear whether something is made of metal or wood, whether it is massive or hollow, whether it is controlled or uncontrolled. Deeper usually means bigger regardless of overtone structure. Higher can for example also mean faster (e.g. wind). Parents can hear in a slightly higher pitched noise their kid makes whether they have hurt themselves even if the noise is the same they make every day. Of people speak higher they are excited etc. A lot of that is about relative potch and overtone structures, but even if you take that away, some part that is absolute remains.
If you have a semitone of a difference in some physical vibrating object that can be a noticable difference in mass.
I am not saying transcendental statements like "key X is the most melancholic" are true, what I say is that even to those without perfect pitch hearing a semitone difference might feel different without reference (especially since our sound systems might be able to reproduce one bass fundamental better/punchier/clearer than another).
Yes, especially in that bass range, the absolute value of the frequencies really come into play. A low C at 55Hz might be fully audible on a typical home system, but 2 notes down a ~41Hz A note might dissapear because it's getting harder to play that frequency on a smaller set of speakers.
Experiments on the development of the visual system in cats revealed that seeing only vertical edges and not horizontal edges while kittens made their perceptions of horizontal edges as adults less sensitive. I suppose that there is similar development of sensitivity to a certain frequencies in humans.
I suspect this is you having some amount of absolute pitch? It's pretty common! What's rare is reliably and quickly identifying pitches without a reference, though even this can often be learned with practice.
Rick says no...
I emphasise that the common belief echoed here in this discussion perpetuates to children who can learn perfect pitch but often do not for lack of encouragement.
It is similar to illiteracy that is often perpetuated by parents to their offspring, which incidentally is often the case with music notation. There are different languages of music notation but most children never learn to read or write.
Play the same piece in different keys, and you'll see that the feelings you get will be different for each key.
Modern tuning with 12-TET is not perfect, but good enough, and doesn't yield very dramatic differences when transposed.
What differences are you thinking it does yield when transposed?
Bach wrote the Well Tempered Clavier with a fugue and prelude in every major and minor key. It was a celebration of tempered tuning which meant you could play in every key without needing to retune the instrument when switching to play a piece in a different key.
Put simply, well tempered tuning means that if you walk up the circle of 5ths starting at C, then G, then D, etc. When you eventually get back to C, it will be an even doubling of where you started. With perfect tuning when you get back to C, you'll be higher than that.
Obviously a string quartet doesn't normally play equal temperament, but they could if they wanted to, I think, if we ignore the playing of harmonics, which is a fairly unusual technique.
This seem to refute the assertion by arxanas that "all keys sound the same (unless you have perfect pitch)".
And of course, playing a song in a higher or lower key means you’re playing it higher or lower. A couple semitones can make a subtle difference in the character of a piece; transposing half an octave can be drastic. This combines with instrument-specific differences too, as most instruments just sound different in different octave ranges. I once had to play a piece written that was written originally in A major for a Rhodes electric piano, but I had to transpose to D major to accommodate a vocalist. This was incredibly awkward; transposing downwards sounded way too muddy, but transposing upwards sounded annoyingly chimes.
Can you elaborate on that? One thing that I noticed is that sometimes it can be hard to make the black keys sound the same as the white keys just because of their different geometry. They are shorter and therefore the lever length is shorter. You have to actively work to get timing and intensity right but you learn that early.
Apart from that I cannot think of a reason why they should be different from the white keys.
However, I can definitely tell a difference, and it’s not subtle at all. If you play a note on the piano for me while my eyes are closed I can reliably tell whether it’s a black key or a white key. If I’m playing on a (high-quality sampled) synth piano that’s accidentally set to transpose -1 or +1 semitones I notice right away that it sounds like a black key where I played a white key or vice versa. Something about the black keys seems to sound a bit harsher/sharper/tangier to my ears; maybe a slightly sharper attack and/or slightly brighter harmonics in the upper-mid range.
I suppose it’s possible that I’ve just learned to distinguish the pitches — I don’t have perfect pitch, but I’ve been playing piano for quite literally longer than I remember, so maybe my brain just internalized the C major scale, or something. But I’m sure I can hear a difference :)
Which keyboard/samples do you use where the difference is not subtle? I'd like to do the black key vs. white key test without looking. Maybe there is something to it I'd never noticed.
Of course, since you hear this effect even when played one by one, this assumes you are unconciously comparing them to some reference pitch. (I'm not aware of anything in manifacturing of piano strings that would somehow make black strings be produced different, so unless I'm missing something, it would have to either be in terms of key mechanics, hammer wear, or tuning.)
I also do not know the reason, but I suspect it might have to do with body resonances/geometry.
> the black keys on a piano sound distinctly different than the white keys
I never noticed that and it doesn't seem plausible to me. The mechanics of black and white keys are identical, no?
Subjectively, I - and I presume many others - get a particular feel even from individual notes, and when I compose something I often start by picking a root note that suits what I want, and then choose the key based on that. Otherwise why have keys in the first place? I’ve had conversations with other musicians about what particular key we’re into lately, for instance, for a long time I’ve really enjoyed Bb minor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CTYymbbEL4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10CQAjCrYPY
Same thing with a more recent pop tune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9HZH_P_5qM
There's also a reason that in electronic music A minor is used significantly more: https://www.edmprod.com/beatport-analysis/
It probably has a lot to do with how well that key suits club speakers.
That's because OP is not talking about the differences between scales (major vs minor) but keys (C major vs A major). With equal temperament all keys of the same scale have the exact same intervals between the notes. They are simply shifted up or down by a constant amount. Before equal temperament that was not the case.
Also this is only the case for the differences they describe between different root notes (A vs G); major versus minor is still totally a thing.