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Each note in a key or scale must have its own letter.
Most Western scales have 7 notes. Including those with a sharp or flat in their name, most notes have two possible names. We have 7 letters for note names and 7 pitch positions per octave on a stave. It makes sense that each note in a scale has a different letter as it’s name.
(Graphic, dots, D major scale with wrong crossed out and right notes)
Music notation is very visual. We can see the notes climb and descend as the melody itself climbs and descends. As we can see from the two versions of D major below, if two different notes in a scale share the same note name there are two different pitches sharing the same place on the stave and needing constant accidentals (sharps/flats/naturals) to show which is which. There is also one unused position, leaving a gap in the visual that we don’t hear.
(Sib graphics of D major melody, wrong/right notes)
If there are two possible names for a note, always choose the name that’s not used by any other notes in that key or scale.
OK, this isn’t quite a beginner’s tip, but it’s a great hack for remembering key signatures, relative majors/minors and chord relationships.
The cycle of 5ths, or circle of 5ths if you prefer, is a list of all the major keys and their relative minors, ordered by their key signature. For convenience it’s usually written as a circle rather than a long, endless line. The keys are represented by chord names. A letter by itself is a major key or chord and a letter followed by “m” is a minor key or chord.
The pattern is centred around C major and A minor, which have no sharps or flats. Reading clockwise, you progress further into sharps. Reading anticlockwise, you progress “backwards”, further into flats.
At the bottom there is an overlap where two possible note names can be used to describe the same root note. The trade-off here between naming these keys as sharps keys or flats keys is minimal. In actual usage, the choice may become clearer when considering the natural (easily played) keys of the instrument(s) chosen to play the piece and what other keys are visited within the piece.
in theory, you could continue in either direction, beyond 7 sharps or 7 flats, but then you’re doubling up with much simpler key signatures for the same sounding key so you would need a very good reason to go beyond 7.
For a piece in a given key, say A major, the most closely related keys and the primary chords are found immediately to the left and right of the home key, and their relative minors or majors inside or outside the purple line.. In the case of A major that’s A, D, E, F#m, Bm and C#m.
Note: in most gentes, the chord on the next key (the dominant) is played as a major chord, even if the home key is minor. For example, for A minor, the chords are Am, Dm, E (rather than Em), C, F and G.
The Cycle (circle) of Fifths
Primary school students are usually taught the sequence of letters as a mnemonic – at my school it was “Go Down And Enter By Fifths”, with a C at each end. It’s boring and it’s technically incorrect (the pattern goes up in fifths the way it reads, not down). I’m sure you could make up a better one…
Below are the pitch ranges of some common musical instruments. The note names and octave numbers are written below the piano keyboard. Middle C and A440 are marked.
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Each note can occur at various octaves. The exact octave of a note can be indicated using octave numbers. Octaves are numbered starting on C. The lowest C is C1. The range of a piano keyboard is from A0 to C8.
Middle C is the name given to C4. Middle C is a pitch that most instruments, high to low, can play and is considered to be in the middle of the range of instrument pitches.
Middle C is the link between the treble and bass clefs. It sits on an imaginary line just above the bass clef and just below the treble clef. This line, called a ledger line, is drawn through the notehead when needed. Middle C is the C below A440.
All the naturals (letters) are 2 semitones apart except B to C and E to F, which are 1 semitone apart.
Not only that, but B-F is 6 semitones, whereas every other interval of 5 naturals is 7 semitones apart, such as A-E or C-G. This is important in understanding keys and key signatures.
BCEF is easy to remember because it’s so odd, like a hip-hop band name gone wrong: the BCEF.
So remember BCEF
If you found this post helpful, please feel welcome to like, share or leave a comment. If you have any questions, leave them as a comment and I’ll respond as soon as I can. To stay up to date with new posts, please subscribe.
