Welcome back. In my previous post about tips for beginner piano players, My Tips for Beginner Piano Players – The Basics, I briefly mentioned key signatures and how each signature has an impact on how the song sounds and how it is played. I would like to go in deeper detail on the key signatures referenced in piano. Because of this, I will have to write a few posts so I can try to cover as many topics as I can. Let’s go.
What is a Key Signature?
A key signature is a symbol placed at the beginning of a staff – in front of the clef symbol – that informs the pianist which notes are sharps or flats. Also, it lets the pianist know which scale the song is playing off of. A scale is series of seven notes interconnected with one another within an octave.
Something to keep in mind about key signatures is there are two separate categories: major and minor scales. A major scale is a series of the same seven notes from a key signature, however, the notes are separated by either whole or half steps.
A half step is the immediate distance between two notes on a piano, whether the key be white or black. For example, a half step up from a natural C would either be C-sharp or D-flat. It is the same key but it could be given a different name depending on which key your piece is in.
If we follow the rule and are moving downwards, a half step down from a natural C would be B (or if we´re being technical, a B could also be labelled as a C-flat but you do not really have to worry about that at the moment).
A whole note is when the distance between two notes or pitches is two half steps. Using our example above for natural C, a whole step up would be D, and a whole step down would be B-flat or A-sharp.
If possible, take a look at your piano (if you have one) and try to correctly name whole and half steps starting from different locations on your piano. It is important to know when memorizing the different key signatures.
In music, there are 12 major scales and 12 minor scales and I will be going through all of them. When I am talking about them, I will just be explaining the notes included in the scale and the effect they have in sheet music. There are lots of terminology inside of each scale I will not get into at the moment due to being pretty complex so I will keep things fairly simple for now.
For now we will begin with major scales and their relative minors.
Major Scales
Like I mentioned above, a major scale is notes, or pitches, separated with whole or half steps. Fortunately, all of the major scales follow a simple formula. It goes: whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half¨ before repeating again. This also helps to differentiate between major and minor scales. We will talk about minor scales later.
To make this a little easier to understand, we will take a look at C-major.
C-Major / A-Minor
Fortunately for C-major, there are no sharps or flats, which means it will be blank at the beginning of the staff. However, this does not guarantee there will be no sharps of flats throughout the rest of the song. One could easily be placed right before the note as an indication the note is not ¨natural¨, meaning no sharps or flats.
The notes for C-major are: C, D, E, F, G, A, B, and C. This is the case for the treble and bass clef. If we were to apply C-major to the formula above we can see that it follows the pattern.
- One whole note up from C is D. (one black key in-between)
- One whole note up from D is E. (one black key in-between)
- One half note up from E is F. (no black key in-between)
- One whole note up from F is G. (one black key in-between)
- One whole note up from G is A. (one black key in-between)
- One whole note up from A is B. (one black key in-between)
- One half note up from B is C. (no black key in-between).
By using this formula for every major scale, it will be easier to memorize and determine which scales are major or minor. If it fits the formula, it is major. If it does not fit the formula, it is minor.
Relative Minors
Before we move on to the other major scales, I must address the elephant in the room. If you are completely new to music theory (concept and methods musicians use to create music), you may be wondering why A-minor is attached to C-major.
This is because each major scale has a relative minor scale that accompanies it. A relative minor is simply a minor scale that shares the same key signature as the major scale. So essentially, they consist of the same exact notes but start at a different location.
For example, the notes for A-minor are: A, B, C, D, E, F, and G before repeating. The difference is A-minor begins on the sixth degree – or the sixth note – of the major scale starting from the root note. A root note is the pitch that forms a chord, scale, or key. So the root note of C-major is C and the root note of A-minor is A.
So, if you were to count up six notes from the root note on a major scale, you could easily identify the relative minor every major scale has.
Conclusion
I realize this was a lot of information and can be a little confusing to understand. I will be continuing to explain music theory and giving tips as I go through each topic. I have tried to go through everything as detailed as I can without going of on a tangent but there is still a lot to cover.
I hope even a small portion of this was the slightest bit helpful and I encourage anyone to do their own research as well. You can and will learn it. I promise.
Keep playing!
-Jess
Calm Instrumentals 