>Step by step

Exploring sharps and flats

1 Let’s start off this month with our old friend, the C major scale – seven notes, from C to B, played on the white keys of the piano keyboard, starting on the root note of C and going up through D, E, F, G A and B. Since these are the white keys, they’re neither sharp nor flat, so are known as the ‘natural’ notes. 2 If we add the black notes – also known as the sharps and flats, or ‘accidentals’ – into the mix, we get what’s known as the C chromatic scale. This takes in every note within the octave, including both the white and black keys, played in order along the keyboard from C upwards, to

D#, F#, G#, A#, get C, C#, D, E, F, G, A, and B. 3 So when a note is sharpened, we’ve raised it in pitch by a semitone – in other words, it needs to be played a semitone higher on the keyboard. Written as text, the sharp symbol – which looks a bit like a Twitter hashtag – comes after the

C#. name of the note, eg However, in the score, the symbol is placed to the left of the affected notehead. 4 When a note is flattened, we lower it in pitch by a semitone – in other words, it needs to be played a semitone lower on the keyboard. Written as text, the flat symbol – resembling a sort of slimmeddown, lower-case ‘b’ – comes after the

Eb. note name, eg, In the score, however, like the sharp symbol, it’s placed to the left of the note head. 5 There’s a bit of etiquette involved when it comes to using sharps and flats in music notation. To illustrate, here’s an example of a short phrase in the key of C major, which normally contains no sharps or flats. All the notes that belong to the key are natural notes, played on the white keys, so these are the notes that are used in the melody. 6 Here, I’ve added a note that doesn’t

F#. belong to the key – This is marked in the notation with a sharp symbol, which is fine if there’s just the odd one or two. But if we were in a different key that required many black notes, we’d have to add a sharp or flat symbol to every note that needed one, making the score cluttered and harder to read.

7 This is why key signatures exist: to tell us which key the music is in by indicating which sharp or flat notes need to be played as standard throughout the piece. The key here is G major, which

F#. contains one sharp note – So, even though the notes on the score F# appear as

F# naturals, each F is played as because appears in the key signature. 8 Another peculiarity of accidentals in a score that helps to keep things neat and tidy is that they need only occur once in a bar – they act like a switch, affecting the rest of the bar. Check out the two-bar melody above. If we were to play it as shown here, it would be all natural notes, ie, the white keys on the keyboard. 9 Here’s the same melody, but this time,

D#. we’ve sharpened the first D note to If we only want this note to be affected, the next D that occurs within the bar needs to have a natural sign – like a box with extended vertical edges – added to ‘reset’ that first accidental. Otherwise a player reading D# the score would play the second D as too. 10 By the time we reach the second bar, we’ve passed the bar line and entered a new bar, so the accidental has been reset and the D is to be played as D natural once again. Incidentally, if you have two accidental notes that are the same pitch but in different octaves, both will need to be marked with a sharp or flat symbol, even if they occur within the same bar. 11 Finally, this melody is in the key of A minor, the relative minor to C major – it uses all the white notes like C major, but starts on A rather than C, resulting in a minor scale. Take a look at G#, the eight notes in bar 3. The third note is a which is outside the scale of A minor, so it gets a G# sharp symbol, as does the fifth note, the an octave below. 12 However, the sixth and eighth notes are both G naturals, so they need natural signs to C#, show this, as we’re still in bar 3. Note 7 is also outside the scale, so it too gets a sharp symbol. But when we next play a C – in bar 8 – we’re in a new bar, so we play it as a C natural. We don’t need a natural sign, as the accidental has been reset by the bar line.