Well, once I had to sing the National Anthem solo on stage, and it's in 
F.  That is too high for most voices; I am a mezzo.  It was too low for 
me; I had them move it up a notch into G -- and I knew for sure I'd be 
all alone on it --

(Mrs.) Frankie Anderson
Wells College

Michael Cassidy wrote:

> My problem as a former trumpet player is that the key of G isn't 
> higher or lower; it depends on the pitch the musician is asked to sing 
> or play.
> A baritone just wrote me:
>
> A song in G may require a sopano to hit a high C that
> might be easier for her to sing if it was transposed
> down to say F. (Opera singers would do this all the
> time). A song in A could just as easily have a
> narrower range, so the singer who would have trouble
> with a song in G might have no trouble in a song whose
> tonic is a whole note higher.
>
> That said, there are bodies of songs that tend to have
> the same range, so a folk or blues singer may find
> themselves singing in the same key because all of
> their repertoire uses pretty much the same range. It
> seldom makes use of difficult high or low notes within
> the key. So you hear people say that a certain key is
> too high. I tend to sing blues, folk, rock  in G,
> which fits my voice and my hands.
>
> Something tells me that two song writers would know this.
>
> On Feb 28, 2005, at 11:33 AM, Honor Conklin wrote:
>
>>   I found a reference to the song in:
>>
>> Random House  Historical Dictionary of American Slang.  New York:
>> Random House, 1994, V. 1, "A-G," p. 851
>>
>> "up in G" is a reference to the key of G in music and means "doing very
>> well" and "at or to a high point"
>>
>
> Is there no explanation where they got this?
>