The universal key or universal scale is a concept employed in music theory in which specific notes or chord symbols in a key signature are replaced with numbers or Roman numerals, allowing for a discussion describing relationships between notes or chords that can be universally applied to all key signatures.
For example, in the key of E-flat major, the notes of the scale would be replaced like so:
- E♭ becomes scale degree 1
- F becomes scale degree 2
- G becomes scale degree 3
- A♭ becomes scale degree 4
- B♭ becomes scale degree 5
- C becomes scale degree 6
- D becomes scale degree 7
Read more about Universal Key: Triads (common Practice Style), Triads (jazz and Popular Style), Further Reading
Famous quotes containing the words universal and/or key:
“It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood, and always we are fishing up some wonderful article out of that pond; until, by and by, we begin to suspect that the biography of the one foolish person we know is, in reality, nothing less than the miniature paraphrase of the hundred volumes of the Universal History.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Power, in Case’s world, meant corporate power. The zaibatsus, the multinationals ..., had ... attained a kind of immortality. You couldn’t kill a zaibatsu by assassinating a dozen key executives; there were others waiting to step up the ladder; assume the vacated position, access the vast banks of corporate memory.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)