It is important for musicians to learn the basic building block of Western music, which is the actual series of notes/pitches that are used. In a nutshell, there are 12 notes/pitches used in Western Music. (For the sake of keeping things elementary we will not be discussing quarter-tonal and microtonal pitches here.) The 12 notes are:

C    C#/Db   D   D#/Eb   E   F   F#/Gb   G   G#/Ab   A   A#/Bb   B/Cb   B#/C (again)

All of these notes are a half step apart and located on the following keys of a piano:

Please take notice of the “#” and “b” symbols after some of the note names. These are known as “sharp” and “flat” notes, respectively. In layman’s terms, a “sharp” note (#) implies that the note/tone/pitch is one half step higher than the note that came before it. C#, for example, is one half step higher than C. Similarly, a “flat” note (b) implies that the note/tone/pitch is one half step lower than the note that came before it; Db is a half step lower than D.

You may be wondering why some of the notes in the list are separated by a slash, or why they are listed as “X or X” on the piano graphic. Notes such as C# and Db are known as “enharmonic notes.” C# and Db are exactly the same; they sound exactly the same if you were to hear them, and they are located in exactly the same fret on the guitar.

I must admit that it’s hard to explain the jump you have to make from simply learning the notes to understanding what key signatures are and how they function. The basic idea is that music compositions usually have a strong, core tonal center from which the music bases itself. These tonal centers provide an easily-identifiable place of recognition not only for the listener, but also for the composer. You may often hear people say, “xyz song is in the key of Bb,” or “Play this in E Major.” When these things are mentioned, the speaker is referring to a key signature.

The Major Keys

In a major key, the intervals of notes from one to another follows this system:

Root note | Whole step (same as two half steps) | Whole Step | Half Step | Whole Step | Whole Step | Whole Step | Half Step

It’s pretty easy, actually. Using this list of intervallic relationships, and starting on the note ‘C’ for the sake of simplicity, a C Major Scale will look like this:

C  D  E  F  G  A  B  (back to C, one octave higher)

If you’re having trouble figuring this out, go back to the list of notes/pitches at the beginning of this article, start on the ‘C’ note, and move forward the appropriate number of steps (half step or whole step) to find the next note.

Key Cycles

Traditionally, we memorize the major keys in a cycle of 4ths, so going up four diatonic (“in key”) pitches from C brings us to F. In all my years of playing music and majoring in music composition in college, I honestly cannot tell you why this cycle moves in 4ths other than to give the music theory student something easy to understand. (As a side note, if anyone knows why this is the case, please tell me; I would love to know!)

Now that we are in the key of F, let’s start building an F Major Scale:

• F (the root note)
• One whole step from F is G
• One whole step from G is A…

So far, so good, right? When we move one half step up to the next note from A, we have a choice of either A# or Bb. Which do we choose? Both notes sound the same, right? The best way I can explain this is that we already have an “A” note in the scale, so for the sake of avoiding unnecessary confusion, we want to use the Bb note name instead, giving us:

F  G  A  Bb

• From the Bb we can move up another whole step to get C.
• From C, another whole step to D.
• Another whole step to E
• And one more half step brings us back to F… back to the beginning but an octave higher.

Put it all together and you get: F  G  A  Bb  C  D  E (F)  – the F Major Scale!

You should continue this exercise through the rest of the key signatures on your own. I’ll give you one more example because I’m such a generous person:

Ab Major = Ab  Bb  C  Db  Eb  F  G

Just in case you need a little push, here is the entire key cycle in 4ths starting from C:

C   F   Bb   Eb   Ab   Db   Gb   B   E   A   D   G

The process of determining the notes of each major key is very easy once you get used to it, and after a eventually you will automatically know that the key of E Major has four sharps, the key of Bb Major has two flats, etc.

Consistency Helps

After you’ve spent some time with the major keys, you should begin to notice that the order sharps and flats appear in each key is constant. As you move through each key, the order of sharps and flats get added to consistently each time. The order of these sharps and flats (also collectively known as “accidentals”) are:

• Sharps – F#, C#, G#, D#, A#, E#, B#
• Flats – Bb, Eb, Ab, Db, Gb, Cb, Fb,

Some interesting things to note:

1. The order of sharps moves in intervals of a fifth.
2. The order of flats moves in intervals of a fourth.
3. The order of both sharps and flats are exactly reversed. Turn the order of sharps around (just for the sake of comparison) and you’ll see that it’s the same exact order as flats.

The ordering of sharps and flats is something you should just memorize. In the long run it makes things MUCH easier to have this information ingrained in your head so you don’t have to think about it while you are playing. I don’t know of an easier way to internalize the order, so just cram it into your brain however you can (consistent practice always works) until you don’t have to think about them anymore.

Putting It on Paper

To identify the key signature of a composition to its performers, the composer writes the number of sharps or flats at the beginning of the piece of music, after the clef and before the time signature, on every staff. For now I have to presume that you know what a music staff looks like and how it works. (If not, please take a look at xxxxxx.) The key of C Major has no sharps or flats, therefore no accidentals appear on the staff at the beginning of the composition. In this case the music staff looks like this:

The key of F Major (one flat – Bb) would look like this:

The key of Bb Major (two flats – Bb and Eb) would look like this:

Here is the complete list (which I hope you tried to figure out on your own, cheaters!):

Luckily, there are a few tricks that make understanding the key signatures easier:

• When looking at a key signature that has “sharp” notes in it, the key signature of the song is one half step above the last sharp that appears on the staff. For example, the key signature with four sharps in it (going in order – F#, C#, G#, D#) would be E Major; one half step up from the last sharp, D#, is E. Make sense? Similarly, the key signature with six sharps in it (F#, C#, G#, D#, A#, E#) would be F# Major. Since E# is enharmonically the same as the note F, the appropriate choice for the next note one half step up would be F#.
• When looking at a key signature that has “flat” notes in it, the key signature of the song is based on the NEXT TO LAST flatted note – the penultimate note for the word nerds out there. As an example, if you take the key signature of 4 flats (Bb, Eb, Ab, Db), look at the second to last flatted note – in this case Ab – and that is the key signature – Ab Major.

Believe me, it might seem like an awful lot to learn, but once you break it down there are only a few components that need to be learned and they are really quite simple to retain once you understand the concepts.

A Minor Issue

I know what you’re saying… “Hey Josh, that’s great, but what about those minor keys I also hear about?”

Ahh, yes… minor keys. Minor keys are very easy now that you have an understanding of the major keys. Minor keys and Major keys are related to each other; that’s why you will sometimes hear them referred to as a “relative minor” or “relative major” key. The best way I can describe minor keys is to get you to start from a major key and move down a minor third (on the guitar this relates to moving up or down three frets). So if you start on “F” for example, and move down three half steps you get the note D. Therefore, D minor and F Major are relative to each other. They both have the same notes in them (D, E, F, G, A, Bb, C). The only difference is that in the key of F Major you use F as the tonal center for your composition, whereas in D Minor (the saddest of all keys, really…) you use D as the tonal center.

If you want to find the relative major key of a minor key, just move UP four ½ steps. The relative major key of B minor is D Major (two sharps – F# and C#). Remember that you will always move down a minor third from a major key to get its relative minor, and you will always move up a minor third from a minor key to get its relative major key.

That’s the long and (not so) short of it. I hope I haven’t confused you guys too much. Look for plenty more articles to come. As always, comments/criticisms/questions and suggestions for future articles are certainly welcome.

Enjoy!