Never Make Me Cry key signature
 

So, I have the same FM music book a lot of you have with basic arrangements for songs from the white album, Rumours, and Tusk. I’ve played through a lot of the Tusk tunes on my piano. In that book, “Never Make Me Cry” is transcribed in C major. I never questioned it—the art of Christine simplicity and all that. But today I played along to the recording and found she’s singing in C sharp (or is it D flat?). This strikes me as highly unusual for her. By her own admission, she preferred her “root notes” to be on ivory keys because her hands slipped off the ebony ones. The only other song of hers I can think of with a root note on an ebony key is “Warm Ways.”

Anyone have a take on this and/or more knowledge about NMMC’s key (David?).

I understand Christine wanting to avoid using the black keys (I'm not much of a pianist myself but have often soothed a bad day with an F-major Songbird before bed) but even back in the 70s, would it not have been possible to just get the keyboard to transpose the keys up a semitone by pressing a button or two. Then, you can physically play in C, but it will sound as C#/Dflat. It's pretty standard now.

Yes, to all of this.

They could have also sped up the tapes just enough to take the song to c#... that's done often.

Depends, but generally C # (C sharp).

Sometimes singers add notes that are not in the original key ...

But F major DOES have accidentals (black keys) -- it has a B flat. And with a digital piano, yes, you can absolutely transpose with a button or two.

Yeah, I don’t have any idea what key she’s actually playing on the album. But what everybody says here is logical — she can transpose (although not on an acoustic piano), she can practice the song in D flat, or the track can be sped up.

the only other thing I have to add is that it’s easy to play this I-IV-V song in D flat. Nothing very tricky is going on keyboard-wise. Also, you can see her playing it aboard her boat in the 1979 documentary. If you have that handy, can you tell? It’s really a simple keyboard thing (as are many of her tunes, even her best tunes). I was watching McCartney do a piano video the other day, and he shows how his best musical ideas just come out of very basic chords built on the white keys!

Absolutely!

I'm writing something with chords C maj/A min/F maj/G maj and someone I know suggested changing to the relative minor, that way still keeping it all to the white keys, to change the song up a bit - a simple idea, like McCartney may even suggest (haven't seen the video). So we went A min/G maj/E min/D min, I think it was.

In the harmonic A minor scale there's a raised sixth, if I recall, which adds a black key. But NOT in the natural minor scale.

(Sorry if this is boring.)

She could have given Irving Berlin a ring, who only played in F#...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO8VZoRw214

Lots of sharps in F # :lol:

F♯, G♯, A♯, B, C♯, D♯, and E♯ (Had to Google this one, I never play anything in F sharp....)

Never going back again is in F# on the orginal- its normally played with a dropped D lowest string and a capo on the 4th fret, so that the chord shapes you're playing are shaped as they would be if you were playing in D.

There are probably other more difficult ways of playing it, maybe with weirder string tunings, but that's how I do it. Never tried it on the piano though. Maybe I'll give it a go, now that I think of it.

My guitar playing is terrible. I know what a capo is, that clip to change the key. I know most of my scales on piano (D major would have a C# and an F#).

I play a song called At the Party that has chords F# / G / F / C# so it's kind of in D major but I think one of the chords doesn't fit the key (F major).

Anyway, nice talking :) I HATE HATE Never Going Back Again, no offence to Lindsey, but I much prefer Second Hand News from that album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRZ4C__bBfo

No, I think Mrs.Scarrott was affirming that Christine liked key signatures with root notes on white keys, such as F. She wrote a lot in D and E as well, and both of those have accidentals (two for D, four for E) but as long as the root note was on a white key, she was happy.

I rewatched the Tusk doc where she is singing NMMC on her yacht. It sounds a half-step down from the album—I could be wrong. But it sounds like a (boozy) C.

Have you considered the simple possibility that Christine was singing it off key? Lord knows it wouldn’t be the first time, just saying! Let’s remember the Tusk album version isn’t auto tuned like BuckVie and their latter work undoubtedly was