Listening to ‘James - Getting Away With It’
How do I work out what key it’s played in.
It’s starts on the A string on D, slides up to F, back down to C, then switches to G on the E string. I worked out the notes by listening and and trying, but I’ve no idea what key it’s in. I’ve looked at the keys chart on course extras, but I’ve no idea how to work it out.
At best guess it’s G minor, but that’s taken me like 20 minutes to come to this conclusion and im probably wrong.
I think it’s in C major, below is some standard notation for this tune, the bass line is just root notes over the chord progression as best as I can tell. Assuming it’s in C major and the chart isn’t wrong, this is a ii-IV-I-V chord progression.
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I also have some trouble figuring out the key of some songs. It isn’t always easy. But it might help to find the sheet music for the guitar part, when the bass part doesn’t show the key.
@andrea-slndr, I agree, unless you’re hell bent on figuring it out by ear, just find sheet music, piano is good because it’ll have both the treble and bass clef.
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Sometimes it is easy to figure out by seeing if the notes are natural, sharps or flats, and then check from the lists of major and minor chords. That might give them away. And then if the notes happen to be played in a recognisable minor or major scale on the fretboard, it gets so much easier. But they might be in different octaves, and in that case it takes more time to figure it out.
But, all this detective work is a good exercise itself!
This particular tune is an odd chord progression and I can see why @keat-r thought it was in a minor key since it leads with the Dm.
Hey @keat-r - this is a great question, and super hard to answer for this song.
You were having a hard time because this song doesn’t fit to something that would be an easy ‘what key is this’ song.
@jefflangford67 has a good analysis, and it’s right, kind of.
Except that the D minor chord still sounds like home, and it still sounds like it’s the place where everything starts and ends.
So, while the numerals/chord progression can be described in the key of C, the home of the song sounds like D minor… but the chords don’t fit D minor.
This happens all the time in pop and rock music.
The chords don’t fit with a key in a nice neat way, but it still sounds good.
I think about lots of Nirvana songs for other examples - Smells like Teen Spirit and In Bloom are great examples.
They sound good, but they’re just a bunch of major chords slammed next to each other.
There’s no easy way to say there’s a key.
I hope this helps you to know that:
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- Figuring out what key a song is in is very tricky
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- This song doesn’t have an easy or obvious answer
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adam neely has done a couple of videos debating what key popular songs are in, like hey joe and sweet home alabama. lots of songs don’t neatly fit into a key.
@Gio , yeah if this song had been: Dm, Gmaj, Cmaj it would have been so much easier 
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Exactly!
That ii-V-I would be so obvious!
But because it’s in Rock Land, it doesn’t work with grammar.
It’s just like the archetypal Fonzie or whatever Rock-N-Roll character.
They don’t talk proper. Don’t use proper syntax and grammar.
Same in music.
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I came to the g minor conclusion, probably based on it was the first chord which contained all the notes i noted. So now im confused as to what makes a g minor a c major if they both contain the same notes. 
@keat-r
C major has (C-D-E-F-G-A-B), no accidentals
C minor has (C-D-Eb-F-G-Ab-Bb) same as Eb major
G minor has (G-A-Bb-C-D-Eb-F) same as Bb major
Another way to deduce key is look at the chord qualities. So for C major they would be:
C maj
D min
E min
F maj
G Maj
A min
B dim
And since the song you are looking at had C Maj, D min, F Maj and G Maj, I assumed key of C. But as @Gio pointed out this is a weird tune and Dm feels like the home chord.
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