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My understanding is that "what key is this chord progression" is not considered on topic/appropriate for this site (Reducing occurences of "What key is this song in?")

Does that mean that generally, any/all analysis questions of a specific song/progression/melody are simply dissuaded entirely? Or is there a better way to come at this that is better for the site?

As an author of a song who doesn't understand the theory behind what I've created, I thought best to ask rather than just post the question and get it closed.

Is this more relevant to chat for instance? Or simply not appropriate for Music.SE at all and I should look elsewhere?

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  • In general a lot of discussion can happen in chat. I believe this answer if not covering everything at least links to a lot of the discussions that have gone on around this: music.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2951/7222
    – Dom Mod
    Commented Dec 21, 2023 at 18:57
  • The chat room The Auditorium is intended for exactly the kind of question you're describing: "Please help me understand X about my composition?"
    – Aaron
    Commented Apr 4 at 21:48

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Instead of simple “what is this?" questions, a user could instead ask “how do I figure out what this is?”

For the example here, “How to determine the key of a piece of music?” is a much better fit for the site. There probably already are some questions related to that.

If a “how to” question is too broad, they can often be broken up into reasonable parts. Like, “how do I find the tonal center of a piece of music or passage?” and “how do I determine the mode of a passage or piece of music?”

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  • All those questions have already been asked and answered.
    – PiedPiper
    Commented Jan 17 at 20:07
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    @PiedPiper Perfect. All we have to do is mark as dupe and the askers will have their answers.
    – Todd Wilcox
    Commented Jan 17 at 20:32
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The concept of SE is not to solve specific problems, but to create a data base of knowledge. While in practice this is not that strict it still means that questions that only serve to solve a specific problem are not that useful here. Generally we want to have answers, not just for the person asking the question, but for everyone asking the same question in the future. So if you have a question ”analyze this arbitrary thing for me“ there is little community value in this. Chances are high that other users do not need this particular thing analyzed.

So this is basically what chat is for: Finding solutions for specific problems of little worth to the whole community. Sadly chat is quite hidden on this site, so it receives much less attention. If chat was accessible from the main navigation (rather than a small link at the bottom of the page) it would probably receive much more attention.

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  • That's fundamentally not true. If I ask general questions, they are often attacked for "ask the thing you actually want to know".
    – Mr. Boy
    Commented Apr 4 at 16:05
  • @Mr.Boy A good question finds the point between specific and general. A question that is so general that it cannot be answered in a simple manner is not suited for this format. A question that is so specific that it is probably not relevant for any other person is neither.
    – Lazy
    Commented Apr 4 at 19:14

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