Find the Key of Any Song in Three EASY Steps
So if you’re looking at a key signature, how do you know which key you are looking at? Lucky for you, I’ve got this flowchart: How To Find The Key in Three Easy Steps. If you’d like a Free PDF of this flowchart, it’s at the bottom of this post. Click on it, and scroll to “Get this resource for free”
Step 1. Does the key signature have any accidentals? If not, congratulations - you’ve found either C major or A minor. You may proceed to Step 3. If the answer is yes -
Step 2. Are those accidentals sharps or flats? If the answer is both, I probably can’t explain that to you in 2 minutes. But assuming it’s one or the other, here’s the procedure for sharps. The last sharp, or the sharp furthest to the right is the 7th scale degree, which is the leading tone of the major scale. Determine the pitch of that leading tone and then count up one half-step to find your tonic. Let’s say we have 5 sharps, which means the furthest to the right is A#, and a half-step above that is B, telling us that we have the key signature of B major. Which means that we are in either B major or G# minor. This method will work for every key that has sharps.
The sharps are always in the same order. That order is F C G D A E B. Or, as I like to remember it: Funky Cows Get Down At Every Barn. If there is only one sharp, that sharp is going to be F#. If there are four sharps, they will be F C G and D.
The flats are also always in the same order. And in fact, it’s the exact reverse order of the sharps. B E A D G C F. Which would make the mnemonic device Barn Every At Down Get Cows Funky, but that’s correct in the least helpful way possible. What about Beginning Every Autumn Dogs Get Cold Feet? I’ve never used that one before this very moment, but it seems catchy enough.
There are two methods for finding the key if you’ve got sharps in your signature. Method 1. The next to the last flat is the major key. (second from the right). So, if we have four flats, those flats are B E A and D. The flat second to the right is Ab and that is the major key. This method works for all of the flat keys except for F major, because there is only one flat. Which, you could just memorize (and let me say parenthetically, that after you look at all of these key signatures long enough, you will have them memorized, and won’t need this flowchart anymore).
But, there is a second method that will help you figure out every single flat key, but it’s a little more work. You can take the last flat (furthest to the right), and that is the 4th scale degree (or, fa if you prefer solfege). You can count down to the tonic from there - or, in other words, the tonic is a perfect fourth below the last flat. Here’s a key with two flats, the last one is Eb, and that is a Perfect 4th above Bb, and that’s our major key.
Step 3. Now that we have narrowed it down to two possibilities, how do we find out if we are in a major or a minor key? This is a little more ambiguous than the first two steps. We need to observe the melody and the harmony. Often, the piece will start and end on tonic, if this is a minor chord, there’s a good chance we’re in a minor key. If it starts on a major chord, we’re probably in a major key. This isn’t always the case though. So, we can also observe the other chords. In the key of G major, we’re likely to see G, C, D, and Em chords; but if we’re in E minor we’ll likely see more A minor and B minor chords (or B major if we’re in harmonic minor). This is certainly ambiguous and can lead to a good old fashioned theory debate. Just use your best judgment.
Another thing that may give it away: if we are in a harmonic minor key, the leading tone will be raised, so in E minor, we’d be seeing D#.
So, there you go. We’ve successfully found the key. That was fun. Right?
