"Guitar-Friendly" Keys

November 19th, 2005 Print Tip E-mail Tip

When you play a particular major scale, or chords derived from that major scale, on guitar, you'll discover that some of the twelve available keys are easier to play in than others. Some also sound better---richer and fuller. These are the guitar-friendly keys.

What makes a given key "guitar-friendly"? It's largely got to do with open string notes (notes you don't have to fret with your finger), both in chords and single-note scales. If your guitar is tuned in standard "E" tuning, you'll find these keys easier to play in and very beautiful sonically: C, G, D, A and E. Interestingly (I guess) is that these are all sharp keys (have one or more sharps in their key signature), except for the key of C major (which contains neither sharps nor flats).

Now these are just major keys, but the relative minor scales and modes derived from these major "parent" scales are also generally very guitar-friendly---for example, the natural minor keys of A minor, E minor and B minor.

So-called "guitar-unfriendly" keys could be "flat" (predominance of flats in the key signature) keys, such as Bb, Eb, Ab and Db, since most of the notes in those keys aren't playable on the guitar as open strings. When you move chords or scales up the neck of the fretboard, all bets are off, since all keys will require all notes to be fretted---no more open strings at your disposal.

As usual, it all depends on the sound you want to create. Whether you want jangly, ringing chords in the "open" or "first" positions (fretting the chords down near the tuning machine-heads), or "tight", percussive fretted chords played up the neck. Use of an attachable capo allows you to play "open" strings way up the neck.

GuitarNote!
For those of us who do use sheet music once in a while, there is any easy way to determine a key's letter name from the key signature, as long as you know the names of the lines (E, G, B, D, F) and spaces (F, A, C, E) in the treble clef. If there are no sharps or flats (called accidentals), you are in the key of C major (or any of its derived "offspring" modes). If the key signature has a sharp or sharps, take the sharp furthest to the right and go up a half-step. For example, if the sharp on the far right resides on the "c" space (which equals C#), moving up a half-step gives us "d"---so we're in the key of D major. If the key signature has a single flat, you're in F. Two flats or more, simply take the next-to-last flat and that spells out the key. So when you see two flats, and the flat next to the last is on the "b-line", then you know you're in the key of Bb major.