From the course: Learning Music Notation
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Accidentals
- [Instructor] As we discussed in the beginning of the course, there are 12 possible notes in Western music. Notes are named using the first seven letters of the alphabet, A through G. Those seven pitches then can be modified using sharps and flat signs to create the remaining five notes. These total of 12 notes then repeat as we go higher and lower. Let's take a look at the piano keyboard to get started. So the notes A through G correspond to the white keys on the piano. The black keys are then named by modifying one of the white keys. For example, if we take a note and raise it to a black key, it's called a sharp. So for example, if we take C and raise it with the sharp sign, we get the black key C-sharp. Conversely, if we take one of the white-key notes and lower it using a flat sign, we get a D-flat. So these black keys can be named with either a sharp or a flat sign. Now I want you to notice that when we actually write it in script, we would say D-flat, or we would say C-sharp…
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