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Strangely maybe for a happy medium, most dance music uses minor scales. That’s why we say a key is “minor”. The first sounds jolly and twee, the second more menacing and even a bit “sad”. There are actually 7 instances of the note “C” on a piano keyboard, ranging from a really deep one to a very high one. By the way, there are also two “scales” from any given starting note – called major and minor. When someone says a tune is “in the key of C”, what they mean is that its main or starting note is C, and the scale it uses is the notes that you’d play a tune on if that’s where you started. This “scale” represents the notes your version of the airport tune or indeed a whole song in that particular key would use. After that, it just repeats – but much higher. By playing the melody from a different starting note, what you’re actually doing is playing it in a different “key”. These are the 12 possible starting notes for a “scale” or set of notes related to the starting note. One instance of that pattern is called an octave, and actually consists of 12 possible notes. You’ll notice that a piano has a pattern that repeats all the way up its keyboard (3 black keys, 2 black keys, 3 black keys etc). But a piano has 88 possible notes, and there are not 88 different keys. What you’re actually doing is playing it in a different “key”. You could play the same tune a bit higher or lower by playing the melody from a different starting note. You pick your starting note and then play the next two or three notes depending on where you started. Now, you can play that melody from memory starting from anywhere on the piano keyboard. Thinking of the way a piano keyboard is laid out can help you to understand musical keys. Think of the simplest melody, like the four notes they play in an airport over the PA before they say something, or in an elevator when it arrives at a floor. The best way to understand what “key” means is to imagine a piano. Towards the end, she goes “up” a key for the chorus. If you want to hear an obvious example of a key change, listen (if you can stand it) to Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You”. The key of a piece of music usually doesn’t change: apart from cheesy pop records, generally a piece of music remains in the same key throughout. Most pieces of music are in just one musical key Also, luckily there are tools around today in modern DJing that can help you to use keys and key changes to play great-sounding DJ sets. Keys can be really confusing at first, but once you understand the concept, it isn’t that difficult. Reader Robert Moff writes: “How many beats until the key changes? And please can you do a bpm / key chart to help me understand key change, because I’m not sure.” Digital DJ Tips says: Once you understand musical keys, you can use keylocks to make great harmonic mixes.