The Most Popular Keys of Music (external article)
As the Beastie Boys once maintained, there are “only twelve notes ... a [hu]man can play.” They were right on the money about that. There are only 12 notes in all of music (unless you count the microtones between what the notes in the genres many of us are most familiar with).
Every song (in rock, rap, classical, country, and most other genres) is based around only one of these notes, as well as a mode — almost always major (which sounds happy), or minor (which does not).
Data analyst Kenny Ning took it upon himself to analyze the key of every track on Spotify, to determine how frequently they appear.
Overall, major keys (the “happy”-sounding ones) are way more common than minor keys. Some songs straddle the line, but on the whole, this makes sense. People like happy-sounding music.
More mysterious is the order of the notes. Why is G Major the top key on all of Spotify? And why is C Major number two? Much like electricity going through a circuit, songwriters often take the path of least resistance. On a keyboard or a guitar — that path is through G Major.
We saw a similar phenomenon with minor keys. A minor (the relative minor of C major) is the easiest minor to play on a keyboard. It’s the also the most popular minor key on Spotify.
E is convenient for guitar, but not piano.
C is convenient for piano, but not guitar.
G is convenient for both guitar and piano.
So, why is G major the most popular key signature in Spotify’s catalog? Those who have ever studied guitar or piano, they quickly learn that certain keys are easier to play than others.
Black keys on a piano are thin and somewhat hard to strike accurately, and the player/composer has to remember where they are. Thus pianists will stick to key signatures that are largely composed of white keys, such as C major, G major, or F major.
For guitar, there are certain chords that are naturally easy to play. There’s a reason the first chords you learn in guitar are E major, G major, A major, and D major.
Combine these two sets of ‘easy to play’ keys together, and you’ll see that G is the common denominator between guitar and piano. So it’s no surprise that songwriters would write their chords in these keys so they could focus their energy on more important things… melody and lyrics.”
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