When you are playing guitar, some keys are easier to play in than others. And singers may be more comfortable in some keys. For electronic music though, these factors don’t apply as much while the low end can be quite important. It can help to have the kick drum to be in tune with the rest of the song or else some wobbling/phasing can sometimes be heard/felt. So I thought I would look at some tunings for kick drum parts and the musical keys that would go with them.
If you assume that most speakers can’t do well below 40 hertz, then here are some keys that fit the bill.
| Frequency (hz) | Note |
| E1 | 41.2 |
| F1 | 43.6 |
| F#1 | 46.2 |
| G1 | 49.0 |
| G#1 | 51.9 |
| A1 | 55.0 |
| A#1 | 58.3 |
| B1 | 61.7 |
| C2 | 65.4 |
After B1 and C2 we are getting further out of the deep bass range. So for a song with deep bass or a deep kick, it might be better to stay out of the keys of C# to D#. Still, there are plenty of keys that would support a deeper bass/kick.
Not all speakers can go down to 40 hertz of course. I checked my trusty iPad as an example of a pretty bass-starved environment. Anything below Middle C (261.6 hz) started to get a lot quieter and by the time we go an octave below that to C3 (130.8 hz) the sound was mostly gone.
PS – Thanks Wikipedia – you’ve done it again 🙂 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_key_frequencies.