This is another reason why some pieces, when arranged in a key other than their normative one, sound wrong. Not all scales or pitches are created equal (as much as Schoenberg et al.

So, when your teacher belabors how awful Bb minor is, they are referring to the ethos attached to that key, not the specific ordering of semitones or the arrangement of the scale. It has also been diluted into the two basic tenants of how people generally perceive harmony - happy / major, sad / minor. Throughout the centuries, this belief has taken various forms - from the key of Eb used in marches for nobility, D major being joyous, C minor being introspective, D minor being 'the saddest of all keys' (Spinaltap) and many others. Your teacher is referring to the Doctrine of Ethos which was for the Greeks, a belief that listening to a certain type of music influenced your mood or character as a person. However, I think the most compelling argument is the least subtle of all the above, and that is that up until the mid-18th century, classical keyboard music was not played in equal temperament! It was played in well temperament, which, like equal temperament permitted music to be played in all keys, but did not completely equalize every interval, so that every key did have a distinct (and distinguishable) 'flavor'. However, different instruments respond differently in different keys, both as a consequence of their construction (open strings) and despite centuries of work to make timbre as consistent as possible. electronic music) every transposition is functionally the same as any other. And yes, in a perfect equal temperament world (i.e. Most people have some sense of absolute pitch, even if it's just a subconscious association of things in the key of Bb minor with other things in the key of Bb minor. Music has nearly infinite potential for subtlety, and yes, drums might seem more simple on the surface, but after a few years in music school you'll be tuning drum heads every time you sit down at a snare drum, have a mallet collection that weighs 30 pounds, and enjoy discussing the relative merits of different origin rosewood on your marimba.

Notes in b flat minor