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I've been playing the piano for about a year and a half, learning bits of music theory along the way.

I think I understand keys and modes, modulation etc. but there's something I just can't wrap my head around: why aren't all single key piano pieces written in C or Am?

My understanding is that on instruments like the piano, tuned in equal temperament, all keys are equivalent, they're just offset from other keys by a certain amount of half steps.

So, I can transpose a song in Db (5 flats) to C (no accidentals) just by shifting everything down one half step. It's lower but it all sounds relatively the same as the original and the transposition doesn't bring any new accidentals.

Mathematically, this seems to be applicable to any single key song in any key. For songs that modulate to other keys, I understand that writing it all in one key would introduce a lot of accidentals but I guess here too, the first key could always be C/Am.

So why do composers go through the extra trouble of writing single key songs in anything other than C/Am?

Jawad
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    This is a great question - and one which just about every player at some point has asked. It's been asked here several times, and I hope the answers provided to the original will cover what you need. – Tim Oct 25 '21 at 07:18
  • I'll go checkout the answers to the other question. Thanks ! – Jawad Oct 25 '21 at 18:47

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