Songwriting

The most common keys in popular music

So you think, you need to be a master of music to be a great songwriter?

Well, here´s the good news! Not necessarily! As with most things in life, sometimes the simpel things are the best! This certainly seems to apply to our taste for music, as well! We like what we know already- to a certain extend. We like what is easy on the ears! This at least applies to the commercial listener!

There are 7 major and 7 minor keys in the diatonic tonal system, which makes 14 keys to chose from, when writing a song, and yet there are but 4 keys, that make up approximately a third of commercial music, according to an analysis by Spotfiy over their 30 million listed songs. Isn´t that unbelievable?

Those 4 keys are:

G Major (10,7 % of all songs evaluated)

C Major (10,2 % of all songs evaluated)

D Major (8,7 % of all songs evaluated)

A Major (6,1% of all songs evaluated)

Surprisingly all four are major keys, which goes to show that people seem to enjoy positive feels in music a tad bit more than the moodier minor tonalities.

However, keep in mind, that this represents the avarage listener. It does not mean, that there are no audiences for songs that do not fall in this category!

Now, if you would like to explore song ideas in the keys listed above, keep in mind, that those are the chords you would wanna use to make up chord progressions:

G Major Chords: G, AM, BM,  C, D, EM, F7

C Major Chords: C, DM, EM, F, G, AM, B7

D Major Chords: D, EM, FM, G, A, BM, C7

A Major Chords: A, BM, CM, D, E, FM, G7

In Western music the most common chord progressions are built on the I, IV, V and VI mostly. But that´s just a rule of thumb! So, go get creative and have some fun with those killer keys!

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