Most Common Keys For House and Deep Tech Music
Posted on | March 6, 2018 | No Comments
In an attempt to get my tracks to sound more like the tunes I like to DJ, I ran across an article about how club sub freq’s can range down to about 40Hz, which is just below the note E1.
| Note | Hz |
| C1 | 32.7 |
| D1 | 36.7 |
| E1 | 41.2 |
| F1 | 43.7 |
| G1 | 49.0 |
| A1 | 55.0 |
The article (wish I could find it again) mentioned that’s why a bunch of tracks are in F and G — because those root bass notes fall comfortably in the range that can be played back. A low F1 note is probably one of those tones that sounds KILLER on a good rig.
Looking at some of my favorite house, techno, and deep tech tracks from 2017, I noticed that most are in F, Bb, Eb, G, or C. I’m not sure my analysis software (djay Pro 2) is discerning major vs minor here.
But check out the circle of fifths:
(By Just plain Bill — Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4463183)
… those keys are all clustered in the upper-left corner, which means that they will be easy to transition to during a set because jumps to neighboring keys in the circle of fifths sound good.
Now interestingly, this guy’s analysis of the Beatport Top 100 Tracks showed a different set of popular keys — but I don’t play tracks as “Pop”-y as the Top 100. Who knows.
Comments
Leave a Reply
