how do I find the best key for a song for my voice?

bryan87

whether writing songs or changing keys of others, how do I know where is best? Ken said I was a high barry

Terence

bryan87 said:

whether writing songs or changing keys of others, how do I know where is best? Ken said I was a high barry

You're a major 2nd below tenor, minor 3rd or major 3rd below alto, 4rth or 5th below soprano.

Focus on one or two challenging passages of the song and it's highest note and guage your comfort.

Klaus_T

you might have to experiment and try different keys. where does it sound the best? can you hit the highest and lowest notes in the given key? does it sound strained? it might have to be a compromise (the verse might be great in key X but you can't hit the high note in the chorus). maybe some songs might profit from you struggling a bit on the high notes, on others it might sound bad and you want it to be in a comfortable key. there is no fixed rule. you need to figure it out on a per song basis.

in order to be a bit more systematic, you can do a baseline test and figure out your highest and lowest notes, just with the help of a reference instrument to establish and write down these notes. then you know roughly if the range is feasible or not, and where it will sit, likely. this approach is a bit more technical but if you are comfortable with sight reading or know the notes you are meant to sing then it might speed it up.

get a capo if you are using a guitar because then it is very easy and quick to try different keys

bryan87

thank you all...
is it better to make the higher parts above your break ie don't have a lot of notes right there? or is this something that ken, geoff tate etc don't think about?

Klaus_T

i would go more by how it sounds. these people have a long experience and will not have done it the way they do it now when they were at your level. they were beginners at some point, too. they might also have had producers telling them to change the key etc and learned what to do over time. if they don't think about it (which we can't say for sure), they might have thought about it a lot before gathering their level of expertise, where they don't have to think about it. another thing you might be overlooking is that the voice will adapt to the challenge, so some things you think are decided for eternity now, are only really gonna be relevant for 3 or 6 months or so from now if you practice regularily, and then you might be able to change the key etc.

you can also ask people that you know what thy think sounds best. sometimes it might even be a matter of taste