Plenty of pieces aren’t in just one key signature. A NOTE ON ACCIDENTALS IN KEY SIGNATURES … So in this example, the second to last flat in order is Db, so this piece will be in the key of Db Major. Whatever that note is will be the root of the major key. To do this with flats, you find the second to last flat in order (left to right, not bottom to top). You can figure out what scale a piece was composed in by looking at the key signature. You can memorize this order of flats with the mnemonic device: BEAD Greatest Common Factor (like in math) RULE of FLATS Whenever you add a new flat to a key signature, you always keep all the previous flats. Note that the keys B/Cb, F#/Gb, and C#/Db are ENHARMONICS of each other - so while these are just 3 audible scales, there are two ways of writing each of them depending on which enharmonic root you start with.įlats always appear in a specific order starting with Bb. Below is a table of how each key looks and what sharps or flats you can find in them. Major keys have only sharps and naturals or only flats and naturals, never sharps and flats. By reading what and how many accidentals are in a piece before it begins, you will know what key the piece is in. This tells the musician what scale the piece has been composed in and what sharps/flats/naturals to use when playing. But wouldn’t it be annoying (not to mention cluttered and a bit hard to read) if we had to label all five sharped notes every time we used one? YES! That’s where KEY SIGNATURES come into play … KEY SIGNATUREĪ KEY SIGNATURE is a collection of sharps or flats (or, on rare occasions, naturals or sharps and flats) between the clef and the time signature on a musical staff before the first measure of the piece begins. If we wanted to compose a song using this scale, we would just place notes from the scale in an order and rhythm of our choosing. Let’s take the B Major scale for example: B C# D# E F# G# A# B. Now that we understand major scales and their construction, we can read and compose music using any of the 12 major scales we identified last week.
KEY SIGNATURES, CIRCLE OF FIFTHS & MINOR SCALES INTRODUCTION
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