Sharps, Flats and Notes with Two Names

In the previous lesson, you moved notes onto black keys without being able to name them yet. The black keys don't have names of their own: they borrow the name of a neighboring white key and add a small sign. That sign is the sharp or the flat, and the two of them will keep us busy for this whole lesson.

The sharp raises, the flat lowers

The sharp, written ♯, raises a note by a half step: C♯ is the row just above C. The flat, written ♭, lowers a note by a half step: D♭ is the row just below D. In DAWs and on sample sites, these signs are often typed with the closest characters on a computer keyboard: a hash sign for the sharp, as in C#, and a lowercase b for the flat, as in Db.

You can see it: the row between C and D can be called C♯ if you look at it from C, or D♭ if you look at it from D. It's the same row, the same key, the same frequency. When two names point to the same sound, we say they're enharmonic, and the relationship is called enharmonic equivalence. Listen, so you can be sure.

No difference at all, and that's normal: on a keyboard as in a DAW, both names lead to the same key. Each of the five black keys has two names, like this.

The white keys can change names too, though less often. Since there's only a half step between E and F, the F key can be called E♯, and the E key can be called F♭. In the same way, C can be called B♯, and B can be called C♭. These names look strange, but they exist for a good reason, which we'll look at now.

Why one name rather than the other

The rule is simple: in a seven-note scale, you use each letter only once. Take the F major scale, which you'll learn to build in the part on scales. Its notes are F, G, A, then the black key between A and B, then C, D and E. If we called that black key A♯, we'd have the letter A twice, an A and an A sharp, and no B at all. So we call it B♭, and each letter appears once.

Listen to this scale: the sound doesn't depend on the name you choose, but the spelling becomes clearer. Each letter matches one step of the scale, and a musician can tell at a glance which note plays which role.

Some scales are written with sharps, like E major, which contains F♯, G♯, C♯ and D♯. Others are written with flats, like F minor, which contains B♭, E♭, A♭ and D♭. The choice depends on the key, never on chance.

What your DAW does

The piano roll, for its part, doesn't know which scale you think you're playing in. So it labels each black key with a single name, most often the one with a sharp: C#, D#, F#, G#, A#. It's simply a display convention. That's why a MIDI file opened in your DAW shows C# where the score of the same piece writes D♭: both are right, because they point to the same key.

You'll find the same thing on sample sites and in chord detectors. A sample labeled “A#m” and another labeled “B♭m” are in the same key: A sharp minor and B flat minor use exactly the same keys. The first name is the one a program often picks by default, and the second is the one a musician would usually write, because it's easier to read.

The natural sign, to cancel

A third sign completes the family: the natural sign, written ♮. It cancels a sharp or a flat and brings the note back to its white key. You'll come across it on scores, and in the way musicians talk: in a track in F major, where you normally play B♭, someone who asks you for a “B natural” wants the white key, B.

In the piano roll, the natural sign has no use, since each row is fixed and doesn't depend on any sign. But knowing the word will keep you from getting lost in a conversation with a musician or in front of a score.

You now know the name of every row. In the next lesson, we look at what a note drawn in the piano roll really contains: a MIDI note, which isn't a sound yet.