How to find key

Song Key finder Find in what key a song was composed with our online music key Analyzer.

What key is this song in? Easily find the key of a song by extracting it from a MP3 (mp3 to key) or any other audio file thanks our Online Song Key Finder. Drop your audio file(s) in the song analyzer below and instantly get the Key in which a song was composed by magic. Detected Song Keys are 70-95% accurate depending on the selected option, and it’s even more if we consider that relative keys share the same key signature.
Hit «download» if you want that we inject the Key found into a custom Song Key Mp3tag (MP3 files only).

Note: if you want to find the tempo, use our BPM Finder to count Beats per minutes instead.

What is the key of a song?

Almost all songs and compositions have their key, which makes it a very important part of the music. The key of the song is, let’s say, a group of tones and chords that are tonally related, or compatible. That group is based on scales – major and minor, and playing it produces a very melodic sound. There are 12 major and 12 minor keys.

Also, a key has a central note – keynote, also known as the tonic note (or the root), which is the most prevalent note in the song (repeats a lot, and most parts usually start and end with it).

Naturally, a tonic chord is played based on a song key, and knowing those are very important for guitar, piano players or any musician.

Can a song have more than one key?

Yes, of course, and it’s not that uncommon. Although people tend to play and compose songs in as few keys as possible (changing too many keys can lead to disharmony and chaotic sound), having two or a few different keys is quite normal. Jazz music is a perfect example of songs having different keys. Improv and chaotic jazz songs can have fantastic key changes played by incredibly talented musicians, but some people can’t stand the sound of it.

Are there happy and sad keys?

There are happy and sad keys and they are related to the song scale. The major key is considered to be the happy one, while the minor key is the sad one. Of course, this is not always the case. A song can be performed in a minor key but with high bpm (beats per minute) plus some happy lyrics, like Happy by Pharrell Williams. It will be difficult to call that song sad.

But generally, throughout history, major for happy and minor for sad keys have been heavily used. I don’t know if this was conditioned by hundreds of years of this style or not, but listening to music in minor keys definitely results in sad, melancholy emotions.

How important is a song’s key if I’m going to be a musician or DJ?

The key of a song is one of the most crucial aspects of music. No wonder why classical composers had key names in titles of their compositions (Mozart’s Symphony No. 25 in G minor, for example). Although contemporary music is nothing alike classical music and simplicity is emphasized, that still doesn’t mean that you don’t have to know the basics of music theory.

By understanding keys and practicing them, your compositions will be much more fluent, harmonic, and generally better. If you are a musician, your solos, riffs and improvs will have more ‘meaning’ and your playing technique will come easier. If a DJ, it will be way easier to create the perfect playlist just by knowing the keys, this is called harmonic mixing.

Use this song analyzer to find the key of a song and start practicing right now.

Tips to train yourself to recognize a song’s key by ear

If you possess a musical instrument, you can play some chords and songs in specific keys. Over time, you will start to recognize the key automatically. You can add more options, like using a microphone and creating audio data that you can listen to later.

In case you don’t own an instrument, there are many useful mobile apps and online sites that work as key finders such as our own above. This kind of a song analyzer will find the key of a song, find the pitch of a song, song scale, or anything you want. Find and analyze any audio like mp3 songs. It’s a great tool to make your hearing perfect.

What is the relationship between BPM and key?

The key and tempo can be related, but not necessarily. For example, many DJs go for minor keys when dropping BPM (beats per minute), and vice-versa. And when you think about it, lower tempo music sounds much better with minor keys than major, It is known that minor keys are called ‘sad’ and major ‘happy’ – lower beats go well with sad music, and higher beats go well with happy music.

But, the tempo is just a speed (rhythm) of a song, while the key is a combination of tones and notes that go well together. These two don’t need to go hand-in-hand and there are no rules for this, but somehow everyone prefers the aforementioned correlation.

How common is it for a note to be played outside of a key’s signature?

Very common. The world has a fantastic music history with millions of songs and compositions created so far. Many of those have ‘accidentals’ (notes that don’t belong to a specific key signature or scales) and thank God that’s the case. Can you imagine if every song followed strict rules? There would be no improvisation, no creativity! We would have gotten bored with music.

Following a key is important as it provides a standard for a nice melody and avoids chaos. But being naughty from time to time is always a good thing.

Examples of songs that are «off key»

Many of the rappers and punk bands have this style, most notably Kanye West, Outkast, even Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Does the first chord define the key of a song?

Well, usually yes. The first and the last notes of the song typically describe the same key. If a song is in C, the first note or chord will probably be C. The last one may or may not be C, for key changes can occur during the song, but when continuing the C scale, the last note will most commonly be C as well. The notes in C key are comprised of C scale, and that will be the most common note in the song.

Can I write a song without a key?

In theory, it is possible to write a song without a key. Key means ‘tonality’, so theoretically you can compose a song without any tonality. Following the key is more or less a guideline, not a must. Creating a song without scales and just mixing notes can be done, but the results are not promising. When composing a song, you need as much help as possible to make it perfect, and using the key and scales is certainly a way of doing so. Some apps can help you with this as well. You can extract beats and notes from some mashups performed by some DJ in a live set, make the noise compatible, and voila you have a song. If you pull this out, you are a great musician.

How to Determine What Key a Song Is In

This article was co-authored by Amy Chapman, MA and by wikiHow staff writer, Jennifer Mueller, JD. Amy Chapman MA, CCC-SLP is a vocal therapist and singing voice specialist. Amy is a licensed and board certified speech & language pathologist who has dedicated her career to helping professionals improve and optimize their voice. Amy has lectured on voice optimization, speech, vocal health, and voice rehabilitation at universities across California, including UCLA, USC, Chapman University, Cal Poly Pomona, CSUF, CSULA. Amy is trained in Lee Silverman Voice Therapy, Estill, LMRVT, and is a part of the American Speech and Hearing Association.

There are 12 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page.

wikiHow marks an article as reader-approved once it receives enough positive feedback. This article received 18 testimonials and 81% of readers who voted found it helpful, earning it our reader-approved status.

This article has been viewed 668,130 times.

All songs are written in a particular key (or keys) that tell you what notes and chords will be used in the song. Finding the key of a song makes it easier for you to play on an instrument. You also need to know the key if you want to experiment with transposing, or changing, the song to a different key to make it easier for you to play or sing the song. While a basic understanding of music theory is helpful to quickly find the key of a song, it isn’t essential. Even if you lack training in music theory and can’t read music, you can still determine what key a song is in.

How to Find a Windows 10 Product Key

If you’re having trouble finding your Windows 10 product key, we’ve got you covered.

In this quick tutorial we’ll go over what a Windows product key is, and I’ll share several ways to find the product key on modern Windows machines.

What’s a Windows 10 product key?

A Windows product key or license is a 25 digit code used to activate your installation of Windows.

Back in the day, all you had to do to find your Windows product key was look for a sticker somewhere on the machine.

Usually you could find the sticker on the side of a desktop PC, or stuck to the bottom of a laptop:

An old-school Windows product key sticker – Source

Or if you bought a physical copy of Windows, your product key would be included somewhere in the box:

These days, if you buy a Windows 10 Home or Pro from the Microsoft Store or another online retailer like Amazon, it’ll include a digital copy of your product key.

But if your computer is relatively new and came with Windows preinstalled, you might be wondering how to find your key – there’s likely no sticker on the machine, and the computer manufacturer probably didn’t include one in the box.

Whether you installed and activated Windows yourself, or it came preinstalled, your product key is stored in the BIOS. This makes it really easy if you ever want to reinstall or upgrade Windows – there’s no sticker on the machine that could get damaged, and no small label to lose.

Still, there are times when you might need your product key, like if you want to transfer a Windows Home or Pro license to another machine.

Whatever the reason, here are a few ways to get your Windows 10 product key.

How to get your Windows 10 product key with the Command Prompt

If you want to get your product key from Windows, the easiest way is to do that is through the Windows Command Prompt.

First, press the Windows key, search for «cmd», and click on «Run as administrator»:

Then, run the following command:

After that, you’ll see your Windows 10 product key:

Alternatively, you can run this command in the Command Prompt terminal:

Both of these commands attempt to read your Windows product key from something called the OA3 BIOS marker. In other words, they may only work if Windows came preinstalled, and not if you built the machine yourself and installed/activated Windows.

If your product key isn’t saved to your BIOS/UEFI for some reason, then these commands will either throw an error or return an empty string. In this case, or if you prefer a GUI, give the next method a try.

How to get your Windows 10 product key with a third-party program

There are a few tools out there like Belarc Advisor or Magical Jelly Bean KeyFinder that can detect your Windows product key.

We’ll use Magical Jelly Bean KeyFinder for this tutorial because, well – come on, that name, right?

All you have to do is download and install Magical Jelly Bean KeyFinder. Then open the KeyFinder program to see your product key:

Once you’ve copied your product key somewhere safe, feel free to uninstall Magical Jelly Bean KeyFinder.

So those are some quick ways to find your Windows 10 product key.

Did any of these methods or programs work for you? Did you find another way to get your product key? Let me know over on Twitter.

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How To Find The Key Of A Song

In this guitar theory lesson, we’ll be taking a look at how to identify the key of a song. Finding the key of a song can be pretty challenging, and it may take you some time to develop the skill. However, the more you do it the easier it gets and the quicker you’ll be able to do it. For this lesson, we’ll be using the well-known Christmas song Winter Wonderland. We’ll start by going over a few tips for getting a general idea of the key you’re in. After that, we’ll go into some more in-depth tips for pinpointing the exact key you’re in as well as a few things to watch out for.

There are a few important things you’ll need to know before jumping into this lesson. You’ll need to know all the concepts covered in 4 Music Theory Fundamentals, Understanding The Major Scale, and Guitar Chords In A Major Key.

What Is A Key?

Before we get into the tips for finding a key, we’ll need to understand what a key is. A key is simply a tonal center, a note, or a focal point for a song. There are 24 keys, all made up of different notes, and starting and ending on different notes. In this lesson, we’ll mainly be focusing on one key.

Tip #1: Listen To The Song

The first thing you’ll want to do is put your guitar down and just listen to the song without any distractions. Try to focus in on the tonal center of the song. Listen for where sections of the song seem to land, and focus in on that note.

Tip #2: Sing To Identify The Tonal Center

Next, you’ll want to try singing or humming that note that you’re focusing on. That note should sound good throughout the song. Don’t worry if you’re not a great singer, this is simply a way to connect the pathways in your mind so you can recognize these notes in music.

Tip #3: Go To Your Guitar

Now, you’ll want to grab your guitar. Keep that note you were humming in your head, and try to find that note on your guitar. You may need to repeat all these steps a few times if you lose the note in your mind. But once you’ve got it, you can try matching the note you’re singing along to the music to the note you’re playing on your guitar. Once you’ve matched these notes, you can probably assess that the song is in the key of that note. In the case of Winter Wonderland, the note is C.

Tip #4: Major Or Minor

Finally, we’ll take that C note, and play a full major and minor chord. We need to check to see if the key is in C major or C minor. Listen to the song again, and try playing a C major chord along to it. Listen to whether or not it sound good with the song. Then, do the same with C minor. From here it will be pretty obvious which of these two chords fits best. At this point, we can probably say that Winter Wonderland is in the key of C major.

Verifying The Key Of A Song

Let’s move onto some more analytical tips for finding the key of a song. These methods are a little more advanced but will help you to be much more accurate when finding the key. One thing to keep in mind is that the first chord of a song isn’t always the key. It can be any of the chords in the song, and you’ll want to be listening intently for that tonal center.

Tip #1: Write Down All The Chords In The Song

The easiest way to do this is to look for a chord chart for the song. If you can’t find a chord chart for the song you’re looking for, you may need to find and write down the chords yourself.

Tip #2: Know Your Major Keys

It’s very important that you know your major keys. Let’s say we’re in the key of G major and we want to verify the key we’re in. We’ll need to know all the chords that occur diatonically in the key of G major.

Tip #3: Listen For The Music To Resolve

Typically, the music will resolve to the tonal center at certain points in a song. You’ll want to listen carefully for this, as it’s usually pretty easy to recognize.

Things To Watch Out For

There are a number of things that you’ll want to watch out for that can throw you off pretty easily. The first of these is non-diatonic chords.

Non-Diatonic Chords: Non-diatonic chords are just chords that don’t occur naturally in the key. They are usually pretty obvious, and the two most common ones are the flat major 7 chord and the major 2 chord. Having one of these chords in a song can make it seem like you might be in a totally different key, so you’ll want to really be listening for that tonal center.

Shared Chords: Another thing to watch out for is common chords among keys. There are many keys that have a lot of the same chords as others. For example, the key of C major and the key of G major have many of the same chords. Let’s take a chord progression: G major, C major, and an F major. It would be easy to say that song is in the key of C major since F major doesn’t occur naturally in the key of G major. However, it’s possible that this chord progression focuses more on the G major, and that the F major is a flat major 7 chord. So again, you’ll need to be using your ears to look for the tonal center of a chord progression.

Modulations: The next thing to look out for is key modulations. This is just when a song changes keys. In Winter Wonderland, the song changes from the key of C major to the key of E major.

Relative Minor Keys: The last thing to watch out for is relative minor keys. Every major key has a relative minor key with the exact same notes and chords. The relative minor key can be found by locating the 6th scale degree in a major scale. If you start the scale from that note, you would be in the relative minor key. Sometimes, you’ll find that the chords in a song will lead you to say the key of a song is a major key. But if the focus of the song is on a minor chord, then you’ll need to use the relative minor key name.

All these tips should get you started with finding keys on your guitar. It takes a lot of dedication and practice to train your ear, but the more you do it the better you’ll get at it. Try incorporating something to train your ear into every practice session.

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3 simple ways to find your Windows 10 product key

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3 simple ways to find your Windows 10 product key

3 simple ways to find your Windows 10 product key

Have you lost your Windows 10 product key? You can find it listed in the operating system itself with a little know-how and just a few simple commands.

Image: ImageFlow/Shutterstock

For most users, particularly with Microsoft Windows 10, the last operating system you will ever need, there has been no need for product keys because there has been no “new” version of Windows. When this article was first published in August 2021, Windows 11 was a pending release – now that it’s available, we have tips on how to find your product key in Windows 11. However, some users may still need to know their Windows 10 product key.

SEE: Checklist: Securing Windows 10 systems (TechRepublic Premium)

Must-read Windows coverage

Your Windows 10 product key should be listed on a sticker located on your computer hardware somewhere—typically in the most inaccessible spot possible. But before you go crawling behind your desk looking for a 25-digit alphanumeric code printed in fine print on the backside of your PC, there are less strenuous ways to track down your Windows 10 product key.

This how-to tutorial shows you how to find your Windows 10 product key using the power of the operating system itself.

How to find your Windows 10 product key

Before we begin, note that the success of any of these methods is largely dependent on how your PC was activated. If you activated Windows 10 by upgrading from a valid Windows 7 or 8 installation or with the computer’s recent purchase, you are likely to find the product key with most of these methods. However, if your PC was activated as part of an organization’s licensing agreement, finding a product key may be more problematic.

1. Command prompt

The most direct method for finding your Windows 10 product key is from the command line. Type “cmd” into the Windows 10 desktop search box and then right-click the command line result and select “run as administrator” from the context menu. Type this command at the prompt:

As you can see in Figure A, the command will display your current Windows 10 product key.

Figure A

2. PowerShell

If you are using Windows 10 PowerShell, the process is similar. Right-click the Start Menu button and then select Windows PowerShell (Admin) from the context menu. Type this command at the prompt to reveal the product key as shown in Figure B.

Figure B

3. Registry File

As you might imagine, the product key is stored in the Windows 10 Registry File, so it is possible to find the code there if you know the right key. Type “regedit” into the Windows 10 desktop search and select the appropriate item in the results. Navigate to this key:

As you can see in Figure C, the BackupProductKeyDefault key will reveal a valid Windows 10 product key.

Figure C

Note: In my case, the Windows 10 product key displayed by both the command prompt and PowerShell methods are the same. In the registry example, however, the product keys is different. The best explanation I can suggest is that because I upgraded from Home to Pro on the example PC, the product key displayed is for the upgrade to Pro (or vice versa). If you have a better solution, please let us know in the discussion.

There are third-party vendors offering applications that can locate and display your Windows 10 product key as well, but they essentially do the same thing we did here without involving someone else’s programming and potential security issues. Also, keep in mind that if you bought Windows 10 from the Microsoft Store, your account order history would have product key information available.

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