Sharps and Flats

Sharps And Flats

All together there are twelve notes in the musical alphabet, but we only use seven letters: A, B, C, D, E, F, G. There are notes between each of the notes represented by these letter names. Those notes are named by their relationship to the other notes using the terms "sharp" (above) and "flat" (below). For "sharp" notes the symbol "#" is generally used, and for "flat notes the symbol "b" is used (this is difficult to distinguish from "B", but the note "B" will always be capitalized in my writing).

So the note that is between "C" and "D" has two names: "C#" because it is "above" "C", or "Db" because it is "below" "D".

So all together the twelve note musical alphabet looks like this:

A A#/Bb B C C#/Db D D#/Eb E F F#/Gb G G#/Ab (and then we’d start over at "A" again).

I know what you’re thinking: "hey, you forgot to put a note between B and C, and between E and F"! I didn’t forget. There really is no note between those two pairs of notes. This is easier to understand by looking at a piano keyboard. On the piano the white keys represent the regular notes A, B, C, D, E, F, G (aka. the "natural" notes), and the black keys represent the #’s and b’s. These two exceptions can be seen by the fact that there is not a black key between every pair of white keys.