Monday, December 23, 2019

Lesson Ten -- Previously Withheld Information

Okay, now in the music theory series, there is a secret I have been withholding from you :

While it's true that sharps go up and flats go down --

-- a flat and a sharp can be the same note.

I'll wait a moment while you pick yourself up off the floor.

Ok, we good? So yesterday we noted that while there are two white keys together between each set of black keys -- one set of between each trio of black keys and the next pair of black keys, and one set between each pair of black keys and the next trio of black keys -- every other white key on the keyboard has a raised black key between it and the next white key.


These black keys are the sharps and flats. Later, we will talk about where they fit in the musical scale. And why. But for now, we'll focus on the fact that there is a sharp or a flat between almost all the notes in the Western scale. Yesterday, we looked at how C-sharp, written C# in musical language, is to the right of the C key. And F-sharp or F# is to the right of the F key.

We talked about how sharps go up, and "up" means along the keyboard toward the treble side, on the right, where the pitch of the note goes up higher.

Since we know that flats go down toward the bass side, they we can guess, verily and forsooth, that the black key to the left of the E key would be E-flat, also written as Eb. ( I don't have a "flat" musical sign on my typing keyboard so i will do the standard fix for that, which is to substitute a lower-case "b" because it looks like the flat sign.) The same holds for the A piano key. The black key to the left of A is A-flat, also written Ab.

I can hear the well-oiled gears of your mind turnings. . . "Okay, so if letters of the music scale end at G and then start over, then the black key to the left of the A key, the one you said was A-flat, is ALSO the black key to the right of the G key, and since right = up the musical scale, a higher note, and sharps go up, then that key you just said was A-flat is. . .G-sharp?!! Up, down -- sharp, flat -- help!"

You can see what I have kept this from you until now. The white keys only have one name each but the black keys have two name options. The reason we worked so hard on sharps up, flats down is that despite the fact that black keys have two names, we still know what to call a sharp or flat note played on any instrument, represented by that black key. The name we use is based on which way we are going.

On a flugelhorn, I play a tune that goes D, D-sharp, E going upwards. On the way back down, I play E, E-flat, D. If, instead of the horn I was playing the same notes on a piano, the black key between the white keys D and E would be D-sharp on the way up and E-flat on the way down. Same key, two names depending on which way I'm going.


The first time I started below the E and went up. I had the note D and then I sharpened it, make it go higher to a D-sharp before I got to E. The second time I started AT the E note and went downwards, so I flatted it the E, making it an E-flat, on the way down to D.

Let's do another one. If I am playing a fiddle and the melody is going up, I play G, G-sharp, A, A-sharp, B. If I am playing that going downward, I play B, B-flat, A, A-flat, G. What were sharps on the way up (G-sharp, A-sharp) are now flats (A-flat and B-flat). G-sharp is also named A-flat, and A-sharp is also named B-flat.

Tomorrow: Everything blows up on us when we move from B to C and E to F.

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